Voting is the least we can do BUT… do not expect systematic change (that helps the working class) to come from the top down. Both parties agree on legal bribery, insider trading, “good billionaires”, the voting system, and the two party system. Meaningful change is going to require more effort: i.e., grass roots organizing from the bottom up. Start in your own community and the change will grow organically.
I’ve been voting. Doesn’t seem to work.
It only works in aggregate. Like how a drop of water won’t quench anyone’s thirst, but a 20 gallon barrel generally will.
This is why I hate group projects
One person puts in all the work
Five people don’t
Everyone fails
:) :) :) :) :)
(please kill me)
One thing I learned early in my academic career was that if I wanted a good grade on a group project it was easier to just do everything myself.
The sooner I can fuck off to the middle of nowhere and not deal with any of you anymore the better.
College in a nutshell. Fuck you steve, thanks for phoning in your part of the final.
I thought the system was to dump the barrel out at the top of a hill so you can proclaim how much you’re doing for the thirsty person at the bottom.
Trickle down, but for voting too!
Oh, and I guess that’s what Trump literally did with the water in California, except they were different hills altogether.
Thats piss in that barrel, not water. We are not a society thats content to just leave everyone else alone if they arent affecting you.
It only works in aggregate.
It just plain does not work. Study: Congress literally doesn’t care what you think
pugjesus,
Are you proposing that the voice of individuals is being represented well against the voice of wealthy donors/business owners? That doesnt seem realistic, right?
Did you not fucking read the article
I read a lot of the “fucking” article (your words). It attempts to disprove a number of studies at once with flimsy analysis. The conclusion of their line of reasoning is that the will of the people is being represented just fine in congress. Seems false on the face of it to any observer of congress’s actions, and the events of the last election. Hence my question. Did YOU read the article.
It attempts to disprove a number of studies at once with flimsy analysis.
… it only rebuts one study, and it does so by citing three others.
So you didn’t read the article. Or even skim it.
The conclusion of their line of reasoning is that the will of the people is being represented just fine in congress.
Lord.
Have you tried the second amendment?
that’s that what they call every week, when a mass shooting happens, right?
Boardrooms not classrooms
I cant get behind that idea because the logic doesnt check out.
What good is a small antipersonnel device against tyranny thats so well staffed? Seems to me like suicide. Do you figure your neighbors will join you? Seems doubtful to me.
Is taking someone down with you some sort of comfort? If it comes to it, running for your life seems a significantly better option. What are you fighting for, your country? your housing lot? our “way of life”?
It’s mitigation.
Show me the part where it mitigated giving the entire government to nazis
Took longer
Not exactly a ringing endorsement.
“This is super important but will ultimately fail and you’ll have to shoot the Nazis anyway.”
mit·i·ga·tion noun
the action of reducing the severity, seriousness, or painfulness of something.
“the emphasis is on the identification and mitigation of pollution”
Are there not Nazis in charge of our government? How was that at all mitigated and not just delayed?
making it difficult to vote is a feature not a bug.
The question isn’t why are they not doing anything but why didn’t they do anything when they had the chance.
Obama had the house and senate his first term and all we got was shitty healthcare and drone bombing wedding receptions. We need a new opposition party.
Oh and the Dodd-Frank act regulating Wallstreet. And saving the economy from the massive financial crash with the Recovery Act. And an act that extended how long after being fired someone can file for unemployment. And new tax legislation that had tax increases to help pay for the investment in the economy with the recovery act. And around 50 other pieces of legislation.
Plus the “shitty health care” you mentioned mandated insurance companies have to cover people with pre-existing conditions giving insurance to tens of millions of people. And extended Medicaid to tens of millions of people providing relatively cheap medical care by comparison to before. Free? No. But many went from having bills of multiple hundreds a month to just 50. Again, perfect? No. But a massive fucking improvement.
All that in the 2 years he had both houses. Not his entire first term. Much of it was incredibly influential even if not perfect. To say we got nothing out of it is misrepresenting both what we got and what we had before.
Edit: and increasing the minimum wage.
All that in the 2 years he had both houses
And they had a filibuster proof majority in the Senate for a whopping 2 months.
Which is when we got the ACA.
I.E. the literal bare minimum. They even managed to argue themselves out of the public option while still getting zero votes from Republicans.
On a bill originally derived from a conservative think tank.
And that included Manchin and Lieberman. Ugh.
And despite that we’re still in the shit
Well a major influence on that is because people keep voting for Republicans even when Democrats have progressive policies on their platforms. Republicans winning the House in 2010 kneecapped every single thing the Democrats had been striving for. 2010 had the lowest turn out for a midterm in decades. Often because of people on the left blaming Obama for not fixing everything right away, or because there is a depressingly large population of the country that don’t even know midterms exist.
Republicans fuck everything over, and people keep voting for them. Democrats don’t fix everything right away, and people refuse to vote for them. Such is the stupidity of the American public.
Democrats are also completely unprepared when they do have power. Where’s their project 2027? Why do they dilly dally and prevaricate when they know they have zero time to do anything?
And why do they constantly insist on playing nice? Republicans have been assholes my entire life and Democrats refuse to acknowledge this.
A political party that can only get power for four months out of forty years is broken and should be berated out of existence.
Are they unprepared though? Because every time they get full power they get shit done. Not as much as would be ideal but they still do stuff. And they also would have passed multiple more things in 21-22 if they had been given more seats in the Senate, having a 50-50 Senate made it only possible to get some things done not everything, they could have played dirty and gotten more done. For instance they weren’t able to pass their Voting reform bill that had passed the House and would drastically have changed and improved how we vote. But it’s still BS to say they don’t get anything done. That’s literally far right propaganda that has become so pervasive it convinces people on both sides that the Democrats are useless and never do anything.
That said, about Project 2025. It was put together by the Heritage Foundation. A think tank that does its work and puts it out for free. They’re backed by right wing billionaires. So the Republican party didn’t make it, despite it being their platform. Also wouldn’t it be Project 2029 for theirs since 2027 is a midterm and the whole point for that is to obstruct and do oversight on trump and his administration by having any power again. That said again. They don’t have the massive far right billionaires driving the equivalent of a Project 2025 and democratic voters also frequently argue against Billionaires driving something like that. Project 2025 is successful because all the work was done by Heritage.
Also also, I 100% agree that it’s insane they keep playing nice. They have to play dirty and that means breaking some rules which they seem unwilling to do.
But they are put into power by the Voters and then punished by the Voters despite doing significant legislation and improving the country when they get full power. So them not being able to take power for as much time as republicans has to do with the voters and the Republicans cheating with gerrymandering and voter suppression. And general Republican propaganda destroying the system.
But even this last Election Harris wanted to increase the minimum wage, wanted to put caps on rent increases, wanted to give first time home buyers 25,000 down payment assistance, wanted to legalize weed, wanted to introduce an Unrealized gains tax on people who have stock portfolios bigger than 100 million, increasing the corporate tax rate, talking about actually trying to punish companies who engage in shrinkflation. She had progressive policies on her platform, but instead of Democrats going out and voting and the progressive legislation driving people to the polls, everyone summarized her as only ever being not-Tump and them being the same and some saying she even had no policies. Democrats have things they campaign on, but the Voters say no. Mainly because the left doesn’t vote, or split their vote, and the right ALWAYS votes.
Personally, I’m not saying the Democrats can’t or shouldn’t be better, I think the party needs to be drastically reformed and we need to primary and kick out the older generation and we need more progressives who can talk more like real people. But I’m also trying to be fair about how things actually happen when they are in power.
Damn. Preach.
So stop blaming Democrats who have been actively trying to improve things, and blame the Republicans who have been, and actively are RIGHT NOW, destroying things.
I’ll blame the folks who have power to stop it and are doing exactly fuck all.
That includes the fucking voters, you know.
Try to backpedal with your self sabotage now, motherfuckers.
The DNC lit a billion dollars on fire to lose to a racist rapist again. The “adults in the room” couldn’t beat a semi-literate buffoon. AGAIN.
Voters should have voted, yeah, but in more civilized cultures the folks at the DNC would have fallen on their swords.
He had a filibuster-proof majority for a handful of weeks, and we got better healthcare than what was already on the table. While it’s not great healthcare, it’s still better than before.
That included some staunchly conservative Democrats, by the by. Many of whom were ultra “pro-life”, which means abortion rights weren’t gonna happen.
Additionally, people who mention drone strikes fail to a) recognize the tech was relatively new, but not so new that it was actually affordable to the DOD, and b) each president after has had more drone strikes.
But let’s not let facts get in the way of our outage or anything.
lah dee dah, every president since has used drones. what, all two of them?
Obama had a filibuster proof majority for a grand total of 73 days and they did Obamacare. Dems haven’t had that since.
Get rid of filibuster. Pack the supreme court. Do whatever you have to do to do what is in the benefit of the public. It ain’t that hard, it is very popular but the democratic party is just not interested in working for the people.
It ain’t that hard, it is very popular but the democratic party is just not interested in working for the people.
It sure as shit was not popular in 2009. It’s not even popular now.
Most people don’t know jack fucking shit.
I’m not sure I agree with that. Before suggesting someone wield that kind of power, consider how you’d feel about it if the opposition parties did that too.
At this point, I think the USA is better off just reforming its constitution. And possibly splitting the union into 5-10 separate smaller countries. The country is clearly not an effective union anymore, and to be honest, hasn’t been for a very long time. This isn’t the first time there’s been a north-south divide and it certainly won’t be the last, so why prolong the suffering? Just break it up and be done with it. Everyone will probably be much happier that way.
the fascist party has already done that. I’m not against taking off the gloves if the other guy is coming at me with a fucking knife.
It’s less of a north/south divide and more of a rural/urban divide.
Political parties are supposed to appeal to voters, not the other way around. Will post this again since people still don’t get it:
Directing the attention towards the voters instead of the democratic party is a deliberate tactic to create division among the working class. The democratic party has way more power than your neighbour who didn’t vote. Getting angry at your neighbour will only alienate them further. It’s a waste of energy.
Thank you for succinctly expressing exactly how I feel about this.
This is true, but naive. There was a choice to be made, you can argue there should be more or better choices, but there weren’t. There were two options or the option not to choose. When there’s a fork on the road you pick a way, complaining that neither path looks good doesn’t get you anywhere.
If there’s the Party For Kicking Puppies and the Kill All Minorities Party, neither are good. But I sure as shit would would vote for the former to prevent the later. I don’t want puppies kicked, but I want minorities to live even more. Voting for neither then complaining about minorites being killed because “there was no good option” is just deflecting blame in a situation you could impact. Maybe vote in the puppy kickers and try to better it from there, because the other option doesn’t leave a lot of room.
Yes, we should have better options. But people should also vote for the best option, because not voting is condoning the worst outcome because you felt no need to do anything to prevent it.
This ignores a very important thing: The Republicans get their votes by lying their asses off to their base. I have no doubt the DNC has the money to pay enough people to figure out the perfect lie to tell every single person here to get their vote, but no one here wants that. Short of lies, they’d have to go with their original strategy: big tent compromise. And that’s means hard left compromising with centrists, and we all know that won’t happen.
So what’s left? Abandon the middle? You’ll just shift the non-voting demographic around.
Maybe if the far left could organize its own political movement, but that would require “the left” to operate as a unified group, which just by looking at all the infighting here, is obviously never going to happen.
So we have a left that won’t compromise, a middle that isn’t big enough to win an election, and a hard right party going full send on misinformation, voter suppression, etc.
And the largest group of eligible voters…doesn’t.
Yeah, the answer here isn’t “the DNC changing their shit”, it’s figuring out how to get people to give a shit about voting again.
No this is all bs. Democrats abandoned it’s left-leaning voterbase by appealing to their donors and changing their campaign message from focusing on combatting wealth inequality and attacking the weird antitrans rhetoric to working together with republicans (???) and amplifying racist xenophobic rethoric more by constantly talking about how bad immigrants are. And of course not to forget their absolute refusal to end the genocide they were funding and sending Bill fucking Clinton to Michigan to berate Palestinians for caring about their families and friends being killed because they deserve it after Oct 7.
The Democrats literally campaigned with lifelong Republican leaders and doubled down on supplying a Genocide. It’s not the left that’s refusing to compromise.
And this is all apologia for the Democrats trying to blame voters for the failure of the Democratic Party
There’s no room for our system to allow a third party in. They’ll just be crushed by the two other parties. It’s a rigged system. Money wins. No other party will have the money to win state votes and keep them.
It’s not rigged, it’s just the inevitable stable state of the system. The US will have to move to a different voting system for third parties to matter.
Ok. We’ll just get congress to vote for approving the new system…yep
If you get enough actual leftist 3rd party House and congresspeople in, Dems have to make alliances with them.
So your plan is to defeat democrats in democrat states going up against all the campaign funds that the democrats will provide to beat this third party; and then you think once they’re congress you think democrats are going to vote with them to get lefty stuff to pass that will make this new leftist party look good?
Hey, man. I’ve got some magic beans to sell you.
False assumption to think that third party can just unseat Democrats. Also, the Dems had more money than God during the last election and couldn’t beat Trump. Also, Dems consistently neuter their own “leftist” bills (such as the green new deal) before they’re even out of committee so I don’t think they’re going to actually improve anything materially for me.
You don’t need to use the whole magic beans sneering talk with me, dude, we probably have the same interests at heart.
I don’t thing you understood what I wrote.
I hope people mass dying, losing every benefit of a society, and the chaos will get people to vote.
Stupid fucks.
As the republicans make it harder and harder to vote?
Stop blaming voters and start blaming the systems of oppression that make it impossible for us to make our voices heard. How many people were purged from voter rolls in Georgia alone this election?
Problem is everyone who knew they were going to pull this shit said they would do it.
We all said: check your registration every month, then daily a few weeks out of the election. Keep on top of that shit.
The modern Democratic party fights harder against its own “base” than they do against the opposing party. People still came out in droves to vote for them despite that but their dedication to complacency in a system that is failing everybody but the rich left enough people behind to tip the scales. The Dems have enabled this and anybody who expects them to save us from it is delusional.
Tens of millions of people voted for the Democrats. Do they not get to complain?
Realistically, it’s the Democrats who failed the voting public. Their campaign of “We offer you nothing!”, did not seem to drag in very many undecided voters. You and I might be very politically active, but the majority of Americans are not.
You need to give them a reason to go out and vote. A lot of people have very short attention spans, and easily forgot how bad Trump was the first time around and shaming the people for their shortsightedness is not how you win elections.
Biden was the “Nothing will essentially change” candidate. We finally pushed him out, but Harris only had 2 weeks to come up with “Something”. That something? A small tax credit for small businesses that was DOA in the house. It was probably why they didn’t promise anything else - if a TAX CUT isn’t passing the GOP controlled parts of congress, what the heck could Harris promise that would?
“That something” also included the largest medicare expansion in history and $25k first time homebuyer assistance.
The democratic message was less “we offer you nothing” than “nothing will change”.
Nothing will change has good sides and bad sides. The bad side is that there are no new radical fixes, just small, incremental changes.
The good side of nothing will change is… well look at the absolute chaos of the Trump second presidency. Installing absolutely unqualified candidates everywhere, the military’s first DUI hire for secretary of defence. The absolute destruction of USAID. Musk’s chaos putting BigBalls in charge of trillions of dollars of government spending.
(And, as an aside, it’s not even true that with the democrats nothing was going to change. Just look at the progress they had been making on antitrust. But, it’s true that they were shit at messaging and taking credit for their accomplishments.)
“We offer nothing” and “nothing will change” are fundamentally the same thing when things are objectively bad.
If you are eating raw veggies and corn flakes nothing will change means you eat boring food. Offering nothing means you die a painful death. See the difference?
Not when things could get much, much worse.
Keep telling yourself the democrats failed and somehow they are now suffering, they aren’t, they’ll get to take 4 years off and enjoy their wealth, it’s the voters who tried to punish the dems by not voting who are the morons
Keep telling yourself the voters are morons until we lose in 2026 and 2028. If Democratic candidates don’t convince people to come out and vote we are lost.
If we lose in 2026 and 2028 I think that would just further prove that voters are morons.
The only people actually losing here are the American people.
Hey I’m Canadian, looking at this from the outside. You guys inside the shit show can’t quite see how the rest of us see you and your situation
Hey I’m Canadian too. Don’t speak for “the rest of us.” It’s the Democratic parties’ own gd fault that they lost. If you can’t convince the average voter to vote for you when you’re running against an obviously volatile, incompetent, narcissistic, geriatric moron with fascistic tendencies backed up by the world’s richest and least charismatic deadbeat dad then you done fucked up.
People love it when outsiders comment on their country’s politics
lol the irony and utter hypocrisy of an American saying this 😂
P.s. im native, it’s MY continent
Removed by mod
I was born in Central America and have lived on every extreme of my continent, is that an issue for you? I’ll stay out of American affairs when Americans stay out of everyone else’s and then act alert righteous while lecturing others, you’re all so full of shit.
But that’s the problem. The voters are all morons. The Democrats knew this. And Republicans were giving a master class on how to make that work. But the Democrats didn’t do anything. They treat politics like a friendly game of Monopoly. They assume the rules are magically enforced. So when the Republicans started to cheat, the Dems kept playing by the rules. And now we have a fascist government.
Also, I don’t think the Democrats are suffering. They’re all rich. They can live just fine in a fascist US, they have enough money. We are the ones that are going to be loaded onto the trains.
Their point was that the Democrats didn’t fail, because they didn’t try in the first place
fuck it. I voted dem every election and they did fuckall. We got obamacare, whoop deee doo. we have to buy insurance now. fat load of good that did.
Fuck the dems. I’m leaving and voting for some other party, and you should too. campaigning for a third party should start right fucking now, so the dems can’t say “oH, ThE TiMe FoR SuPpOrTiNg a ThIrD pArTy IsN’t 5 MoNtHs BeFoRe An ElEcTIoN!” Fuck you, you goddamned fake ass left party.
You’re 100% right, but just a heads up, you absolutely will hear dems say that. Campaigning for a third party started long ago and you just joined in.
Dems will have no idea how long you’ve been supporting third-party candidates, and will only recall the discussions they hear while engaged - during election season.
This is a little bit dishonest. It’s not about the length of time you support a party but how much general support they have. You absolutely should support third party and grow the voter base on local and state and even push for larger support. But the spoiler effect is very real. In major elections where voting third party will elect the individuals most likely to harm you and your lifestyle in the most severe ways, and it is extremely obvious that third party has no real horse in the game, you hurt more than yourself. I agree Dems either need to figure their shit out and cut out the cancer or they need to get the fuck out of the way, but until third party candidates stand a real chance at national change for good, i will only be voting for them in elections they either stand a chance in or where showing support for them will help grow the voter base while limiting harm. Mid terms, vote 3pt. Primaries, vote 3pt. General election? Vote to minimize harm while maintaining a potential win.
Damn right the spoiler effect is very real. It was obvious to everyone that it needs to be fixed at a national level in 2000, and obvious that it needs to be fixed in the Democratic primaries in 2020.
So why would we believe any excuse for not opposing it with clone independent voting systems, like third-party candidates do. I’m surprised those don’t strike you as dishonest.
I’m not sure what you’re referring to about “independent voting systems”. I’m not talking about another system of voting in this case.
Is this one of those both parties same things? Because one party is literally pushing dictatorship. I don’t subscribe to that nonsense in our current system. Kamala Harris, for all her faults, would not be deporting brown people, taking away benefits for the poor, lowing the taxes on the rich, and literally handing money to corporations by the fistful. Both parties suck. But one is clearly worse.
No, it’s not. One side is fascist, the other side blatantly sold us out to fascists since 2000.
Yes! This is the time to campaign for a third party, or put forward more progressive Democrats, or take a short-sighted meaningless stance on a genocide being done by someone else somewhere else.
However, 2 years from now, in November, you need to vote for the candidate that is most able to win against the fascist ass-kissing trump sycophant, even if they aren’t a 100% match for your political views or objectives.
Edit: judging from the votes on this comment, we’re gonna lose again because half of you refuse to learn anything from history that (metaphorically) happened yesterday.
I will vote 3rd party from now on myself ever since biden signed that funding bill that screwed trans youth of military families. I see now that the democrats will eventually throw us all under the bus and that there is no future remaining in the party.
However… there is a way to get me to list the democrats as my bottom pick. With a more representative electoral system, I would be able to vote 3rd party yet still put the democrats as ranked down as possible on my ballot so that if my preference doesn’t win my vote would be transferred to the democratic candidate.(I won’t be listing the republicans on my ballot)
So in conclusion, if you would like for my vote to count for the democrats, you MUST push your state legislature to pass electoral reform and to do away with First-past-the-post voting. Feel free to not do so, but if the republicans win that’s on the blue conservatives for keeping FPTP voting in the states they control.
or put forward more progressive Democrats,
Beat this drum.
SHOW UP TO THE FUCKING PRIMARIES.
I remember it being fucking dead in my polling place back in 2020 for the primaries compared to the general.
Yeah, primaries are depressing.
Also, at least in my state (a red, semi-regressive state) you can register for and vote in the primaries completely by mail.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries
Joe Biden won that primary with a mere 20 million votes. Bernie had 10, out of a potential voter pool of 87 million.
What’s really telling is that Democratic Party supporters seem to think that the Green Party is the only third party to exist, and that splitting the vote only affects them, when the right-wing parties and independent candidates get many, many more votes.
Weird how the Greens who get less votes than the Libertarians in every election somehow throw the vote to Republicans, when the Libertarians:
- Are in all 50 states, the greens often are in just over half
- More voters are registered Libertarian than any other third party since the 1980s
- More people voted for Libertarian than Green in 2000, 2016, and 2024
- Yet somehow Green voters are blamed in all of these despite if every Green voter was given to Democrats they wouldn’t have won, but Libertarian votes would have
- And you never see Democrats getting mad at the serious third party that people actually vote for in swing states, but they have taken ideas from the Green party like the Green New Deal
Now is exactly the right time to criticize the dems, make them step up their game. Would be better 4 years ago, but here we are.
Www.indivisible.org is doing some good work getting on democratic “leaders” asses to do something. They also have something called the Payback Project. They are making a public list of all of those who do nothing during this administration and will use funds to buy ads during election time showing what that specific Democrat did or didn’t do.
Totally agree “but here we are”, but a better time would be 1992
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerikaanse_presidentsverkiezingen_1992
If you’ve got a time machine, feel free.
The Dems are a minority in both the House and the Senate at the moment, they’re literally powerless.
The best time to criticize them would have been over the last two years, when they actually could have done something about the mess.The Republicans seem to be able to stop a lot of things, especially if the opposing party not only doesn’t control every branch of government, but doesn’t have a 60+ majority of the senate with a comfortable margin to write off the {Manchins, Sinemas, Libermans, etc.}. But now suddenly a minority party can’t stop their opponents from doing things, even if it is blatantly unconstitutional? It seems like the Democrats are never playing to win.
In reality, the Democrats want this all to continue, because if Trump fucks things up enough and destroys things enough, the Democrats only appeal of “we aren’t the Republicans” can for once, become a winning strategy in 2026/2028.
That’s the key “stops a lot of things”. The way that Congress is structured makes it pretty easy to stop things since there are many choke points. Notice that republicans aren’t really trying to “do things” in Congress?
The current issues and actions are being driven by the executive branch where they’re ignoring the law and constitution . Being in the minority in Congress means that Dems can’t trigger investigations or much of anything to formally push back unless they’re joined by some republicans.
I’ll agree that they could make more noise and should block things up more than they’re doing presently, but these actions wouldn’t really stop or significantly slow any of this.
I’m sick of the green lanterism that gets trotted out to suggest that they’re not stopping things because they don’t want to. Voters didn’t give them power in the last election, so we’re working from a position of weakness.
There are still veto points and lawsuits to be made. Along with the more vocal opposition that you admit that they should engage in. It is neither that they could perfectly stop everything, but that they could actually start trying. The Democrats decided that they should sit back because if Trump fucks things up enough, they will have an easy time in 2026/2028, without changing their usual platform of “We are not the Republicans, we will give you nothing else”.
Being in the minority never stopped the republicans. There are things the democrats can do to obstruct.
Now is a great time to criticize them for their past actions and current attitudes, but a poor time to expect protection from them, on account of their minority position in the government.
I expect them to do at least as well as the GOP from the minority position. If they can’t do that, what right do they have to expect our votes?
but a poor time to expect protection from them
Where did this “protection” idea come from?
No one expects “protection”, we expect them to lift a finger to do the job they were sent to washington to do, or get the eff out of the way and let someone with a spine and some morals get it done. The only one out there doing the job is sanders and the progressives. All the other dems only came together to vote for tougher laws on illegal video streaming sites, and now they are pushing to gut peoples protection to say what they want online.
and back in jan: https://politics.slashdot.org/story/25/01/30/028201/democrat-teams-up-with-movie-industry-to-propose-website-blocking-law
They are doing nothing but what their donors want, as usual. They learned nothing and continue to do nothing.
No one expects “protection”, we expect them to lift a finger to do the job they were sent to washington to do,
What were they sent to Washington to do, again?
Dont make me pull out school house rock videos of how our supposed “democracy” works.
They were sent to Washington to participate in the legislature. I could go for several more details here, but the core of it comes down to - they were sent to Washington to protect the rights and interests of their constituents through the passage and restriction of laws.
ie ‘protection’.
You can’t berate people into voting the way you want. That is the lesson the DNC needs to learn if they actually want to win.
Social media trolls could do to realize that too.
One of those things where both
- Nonvoters who complain that Democrats aren’t doing enough to protect them are exactly the kind of entitled twats who attack what meagre defenses we have against fascism, and then whine (blaming those same defenses they themselves worked to undermine) when fascism attacks them.
AND
- Dems who do nothing in this period are inex-fucking-scusable, if predictably adhering to their norms-based civility politics schtick which plays so well with suburban white folk; and Dems in general are only interested in reform insofar as public opinion forces them to support it, and not an inch further.
are true.
Everyone is constantly making excuses for the Democrats, but if a political party had zero power except for four months out of forty fucking years you’d think we’d at least try to replace them.
I wrote up a big long thing and deleted it, because fuck that.
The country doesn’t want the change we want. Not even the Dem base, not when the ads start blaring and snarl words start getting tossed around. Even significantly left-leaning states like Cali and Washington regularly reject ballot initiatives for progressive measures.
That the Dems, milquetoast and moderate as they are, and as broad a coalition as they make, had power for 4 months out of 40 years is an aberration caused only by the massive fuck-ups of the Bush administration.
Correctly speaking, the Dems probably should’ve had none.
Yeah, I’ve come to the same conclusion: This country is fucked and there’s no way I’ll fit in anywhere.
I have two modes, really.
-
“Things are bad, but they will get better.” Looking at the past, things were immeasurably worse. That they’re still incredibly dogshit now is not a condemnation of our trajectory for all eternity (though I do suspect after this last election, there will need to be a tumultuous ‘correction’, civil rights or civil war style, to return to even the meagre rate of improvement we had before). 2025 is not 1925, and certainly not 1825 or 1025. Technological advancement aside, we have made incredible gains in the history of human civilization, and there’s no reason that it should stop now, despite the seeming power of the elites. Relatively speaking, we are immensely educated and powerful compared to past generations of the working class. Our tools of communication are far further removed from elite control - though that should be interpreted with a touch of ‘damnation by faint praise’. We may feel helpless and hopeless, but they are only feelings - feelings always pass, rightly or wrongly; and reality always asserts itself when the two collide.
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“Holy fuck, what do you mean that by the time I’m in my 90s things might be slightly better? Assuming there isn’t a half-century detour that makes things worse first, Reconstruction style??? And it’s all reliant on the dipshits I meet in day-to-day life??? I’m either shooting myself or shooting up, fuck this”
I lost that first attitude when Trump won the first time.
And even when I’m around people who ostensibly share my political views I still feel like an outsider for a bevy of other reasons. “Did you see that funny commercial?”
“No I don’t see any commercials. Ever. “
“Oh man the halftime show!”
“Didn’t see that either.”
If my biology didn’t make a persuasive argument I’d swear I wasn’t human.
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The country doesn’t want the change we want.
Of course not. Most of them are comfortable enough as-is. Most people don’t have a strong political philosophy - they’re just trying to maintain what they have, and maybe find a way to have a bit more.
Of course not. Most of them are comfortable enough as-is.
Don’t really think comfort has much to do with it. Revolutionary behavior tends to spill out from relatively privileged demographics, and suffering demographics can suffer seemingly infinitely without hitting some point of discomfort where revolution occurs.
Second highest voter turn out for a presidential election in US history.
Clearly its the voters fault…
Also why in the broken nation is the assumption that if more people showed up they would have voted like you? I never got this concept. Please spend more effort being an opposition/resistance and less being poor losers.
Millions of people who voted for Biden in 2020 didn’t show up to vote for Harris in 2024.
Trump’s numbers barely changed at all between the two.
And I can’t say that I blame them. Biden’s presidency… or his campaign… or Harris’ campaign…
It was a shit-show all the way through. Maybe next time the Democrats should try catering to their voter base.
And I can’t say that I blame them.
“I know fascism is bad, but I understand allowing it - I mean, look how uninspired the other option was!”
Yeah, this is exactly why we’re in this position.
14 Million primary voters picked Biden in 2024.
He won the primary, as has every incumbent for many many decades.
We failed them, not the other way around.
What primary? The democrats did everything they could to shut down primaries. From refusing to run other candidates to outright cancelling votes.
I literally just told you the 2024 primaries. Are you an AI?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries
There were 7 states holding their primary before Super Tuesday where Biden won 15 states all at once. Some states he won with a margin over 90%.
Oh yeah it was a real primary with real candidates. I mean the second place guy “Uncommitted” nearly had it in the bag…
Lack of candidates is hardly a fault. What did you expect, Jill Stein?
Oh yeah and what a race. The competition sure was… breathing. Probably.
Same as any other incumbent race.
A rigged primary, where the voters weren’t really given a choice. Voters were very vocal that they didn’t want him to run again, and the leadership openly ignored them. Next time, maybe the leadership should listen to the base that they claim they represent.
If he was winning primaries with 90% then clearly voters weren’t vocal about that at all. The vocals ones we saw in media didn’t properly represent the voters.
But when statistics showed Kamala Harris had a better chance at victory, he did drop out and gave his ticket, that he won fairly in a Primary Election, to her, his vice president.
Voters were saying it very loudly, the Democratic leadership just ignored them. Polls were very clear that nobody wanted either of them to run, and they both had a low approval ratings. The ticket wasn’t his to give, it was up to the voters. The Democrats chose to skip the voters, so the voters abandoned them.
I don’t see why anyone would expect voters to stick with a party that treats it’s base so disrespectfully.
Polls? I’ve got the ultimate form of poll for you. A primary election, which he won.
I still think there’s a good chance he could have won it the second time because there are enough sexist and racist democrats who stayed home who could have made a difference.
Yes, and that does not imply what the democrats think it does.
It doesn’t imply anything, it’s a fact that Voters chose fascism and now they’re facing the consequences.
Yes, we all are. I am just sick of this pretending they did not.
Dems will do anything to not accept responsibility for fumbling 12 years in office since 2000.
I hate the us government as much as the next invasion target, but this stupid tribalism has gotten out of hand. Was this the inevitable result of a two party system (a joke pretending to be a democracy)? Maybe, but the very idea that I am expected to “pick a side” even as a outsider and that once I do half of the us will write me off is laughable.
America, you did this. Stop trying to make it someone else’s fault.
If we are to assume that there was voting suppression, do something about it!
If we are to assume that there was voting fraud, do something about it!
If we are to assume that the majority of americans did not want the current administration, then do something about it!
This should be a no brainier if you have the majority of americans against this then you should have the will and ability to do something about it.
But you clearly don’t have the majority of your nations people behind you in this, most likely don’t care enough (a side effect of that two party system) or and this might shock you, that the majority of americans are really just that awful and want to watch the free world burn.Do what???
That’s the issue. All these non Americans keep saying “Do something” and they can’t even think of anything to do either.
Our government has stopped listening to us. I vote, ai write my politicians, I canvassed for candidates. None of it works anymore. None of it. We hold no sway outside of force. With force were so woefully outclassed it’s not even a realistic idea.
We hold no sway outside of force.
Hmmmmmmm, what could the non-americans imply that we can not write out without risking a ban?
It is pathetic that among high voter suppression (due to Republican motions) the Democrats blame the people for not voting, instead of blaming voter suppression, or any of the other decades worth of inaction by Democrats to foresee and prepare for this. They have a two party system, it’s not like the Republicans were a complete surprise
Its just wild looking into this from outside. If the election was rigged, then it would have fallen on the party that was in power at the time to manage right? Well what side of the two party system was in then? After so many years watching the US ratchet more and more into crazy town I just can not understand how people can not put blame on one half of what is no longer a democracy (maybe a Diarchy?).
Then there is the assumption that if more people showed up to vote the results would change. This seems to make the assumption that the democrats are the default choice (even if the lesser evil, making the concept of choice a joke) and that the people who are clearly angry, burnt out and did not think they mattered would not want to see the world burn.
and that the people who are clearly angry, burnt out and did not think they mattered would not want to see the world burn.
Well, then they can see the world burn. Surely there’s no reason to complain - this is what they wanted.
I don’t think they are the ones complaining, yet.
Second highest by sheer number, eighth by percent of voting eligible population.
From your source:
Why did you cut out the VEP? The very next column…
it stands for Voting Eligible Population by the way.
Edit, for those not willing to click a link here is the picture not cut off:
Notice how there are 3 measurements of voter turn out? Two of which show this to have been the second highest turn out? Now does this show a larger then there should be level of disenfranchisement? Yes, so fix that!
I cut off the VEP because I mistook the voting age population for the voting eligible population and now that you pointed that out (thank you by the way) I’m looking into why there’s such a difference between those two numbers.
Its people that have lost the right/ability to vote. Most likely due to the terrible american for profit prison system.
It’s also a metric that isn’t included with the numbers before 1984 which makes it difficult to use as a comparison.
It was not included before it was invented, it was also not needed as the level of voter disenfranchisement was not yet an issue. It is now the standard metric (since you guys have so many people that are barred from voting).
In the chart I originally posted see how six of the eight don’t have VEP?
Explains why when you use it, it goes from eighth to second.
Voter turnout being high is great for non-republicans.
The voting system doesn’t have to be this way. There are many far more representative electoral systems we could use over First-past-the-post voting.
Why aren’t the democrats doing anything? Because they don’t have to. What are you going to do, vote republican? “Vote for us… or else” is not democracy, it is a hostage situation. It is an abusive relationship.
If the democrats supported democracy as much as they say, they would be scrambling to pass electoral reform in blue states. If democrats believed what they say about the republican party, they would not hesitate to open the voting system to 3rd parties. If it’s all about preventing republican control, it wouldn’t matter who beat the Republicans so long as they are defeated. Who could possibly say no to more then one chance to beat the Republicans?
Here on lemmy and across the internet you should have seen many blue conservatives screaming to the heavens about the spoiler effect and how voting for 3rd parties is a vote for Trump and the republicans. This is the democratic party showing us that, yes, they do in fact understand that the voting system is a issue.
This has happened for longer then ive been alive. So if the issue is understood, and no reform over how we vote gas taken place, then we can easily assume that the democrats prefer this voting system alongside the republicans. The democrats, don’t want you to have any options in the voting booth. The democrats want this hostage situation. The democrats prefer trump and the republicans to win over having to actually compete for your vote.
We all understand that the republicans don’t support democracy, but now is the time to stop living in denial. The democrats also do not support democracy. They want safe states and the world’s easiest campaigns against the worst of us all. Democrats dont want to answer tough questions at debates. They want to put a party hack in front of you and laugh at your lack of an alternative. They will smash that “most important election ever” but 100 trillion times, collect checks from us and call it a day.
Electoral reform is not some impossible dream. We control how we vote at the state level. We dont need to wait for federal reform, it could still happen before the mid terms. So we must all demand the freedom to vote how we want from both the republican and democratic party in the states that continue to use FPTP voting.
Now is the time. No more waiting for the democrats to suddenly grow a backbone. We can choose a better way. We can have a future to look forward to. We can make the world a place people want to live in, at least more people then just the corporations and landlords that lord over us all.
Feel free to hate me bringing this up time and again. Shut me up by passing electoral reform across the country. I know more democracy is the solution to then problems we all face. Yeah it’s a long shot. But it’s better then having no shot at all.
Videos on Electoral Reform
First Past The Post voting (What most states use now)
Videos on alternative electoral systems we can try out.
Yeah now is the time to promote voting reform and try to make a serious third party.
A serious third party needs to start with congressional seats. Not the presidency.
A serious third party probably needs to start at the state or even municipal level, realistically.
So when people promote voting reform and making a third party we won’t be called splitting the vote and enabling Trump, right?
I think most third parties get blamed for that because they parachute into the presidential race a couple months before the election without anyone in lower offices.
Thank you for writing this.
And so long as men die, liberty will never perish©
(Yes, I want people to search for this quote and listen to the man)
Democrats
Not opposing Trump, because unlike the last 40 years, we learn that a party has to have a super-majority in a government body to stop the opposing party from doing everything they want all the time.
How could non-voters do this.
I’m not sure we can attribute this inaction to much more than the established Democrats actually stand to personally benefit from these policies. They don’t really have a reason to push back because their donors are the same people in most cases (there are a few exceptions) and so many of them have the same level of gerrymandering and name recognition in their districts as the opposition.
This is not a statement that both parties are the same. They demonstratively are not as Democrats won’t typically be the ones to enact these policies but they also don’t really have a reason to stop them either since things like the tax breaks personally benefit them.
The dems failed to convince enough people to vote for them. The largest share of votes in the last election was for no-one. Your primary job as a political party is to convince people to vote for you. if they can’t get people motivated in the face of bare faced fascism then they need to take a serious look at why their policies do not speak to americans.
Very few people who voted for Kamala were voting FOR Kamala… they were voting AGAINST Trump
