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.
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I mean, Trump won prettily handily against the other Rupublican’s is my recollection. I can agree that Clinton and her campaign wanted to face him, and helped, but I think it still would have been Clinton vs Trump regardless. I think blaming Democrats for Trump is similar to blaming Trump for Covid: Yeah he made the US response worse, leading to unnecessary deaths, but Covid was still going to affect the nation and people were going to die regardless.
I mean there’s an increasingly muddied line between critiquing the potential president, and supporting their opponent. Russia is almost certainly trying to push the latter here in Lemmy and everywhere else. It worked amazingly well in 2016 and they’re hoping they can repeat that for this election. With so much of that propaganda they’re pushing, people do get defensive about critiquing Biden. Sometimes rightfully so (“Biden is supporting genocide in Gaza, we need to vote 3rd party or Republican so the Democrats can change”) other times its not warranted (“Biden needs to fix his response to Israel to not turn off voters to him”).
Critique all you like. You’re allowed too. But I feel a lot of people draw the line at encouraging voting 3rd party, not voting or voting for Trump for this election. There may be a D candidate that’s more favorable than Biden, but statistically, the incumbent has better odds at winning reelection than losing. I’d much rather ensure that Trump doesn’t get reelected, rather hoping a new candidate is not only better than Biden, but also able to beat Trump.
But I feel a lot of people draw the line at encouraging voting 3rd party, not voting or voting for Trump for this election.
And here’s the crux of the issue, a lot of us aren’t actually doing that but are being accused of it nonetheless. We’re often still being accused of being “Russian shills!” even if we profess our plans to vote Democratic and that we want people to vote Democrat, but we don’t want them to be thoughtless cult followers like Trump voters. We want thoughtful, engaged, educated voters. Those voters question things, even when it’s not comfortable or the best time, sorry.
I mean, you know what your are. Ignore the ignorant conversations and focus on the actually thoughtful conversations. The internet has its share of assholes or mistaken people, all you can do is try to reach out the the sensible people.
A very good perspective to have to be sure. Cheers, mate.
I literally do blame the Democrats for Trump, and if you don’t, you weren’t paying attention.
Barack Obama had the opportunity to become the next FDR. Instead, we got a modern day Woodrow Wilson, more interested in shoring up domestic businesses and building out international military alliances than repairing the post-'08 damage to the housing economy or extending full public health benefits to a nation crippled by medical bankruptcies.
By the time he left office, he was running on… what? A Pacific Rim trade deal we didn’t need. A climate change crisis he’d failed to address. A slew of new military conflicts in the Middle East introduced under his administration that he’d originally promised to end. A federal court system he’d allowed his Senate rivals to hijack.
Hillary sucked. But far too little credit is afforded to the guy who had eight years to deliver on desperately needed federal reforms and - either through incompetence or unwillingness - failed to do so.
“Abortion is not my highest legislative priority.” -Obama 2009
Given the state of the economy at the time, I don’t blame him for this. He also said he believed marriage to be between a man and a woman back then. He evolved. If Obama joins Joe on the campaign trail I’m willing to bet he’ll be bringing up abortion because it’s getting voters motivated.
Given the state of the economy at the time
Except that he did fuck all about that either. Zero prosecutions just billions in bailouts for failing corporations while people were losing their homes.
I blame the progressive who call everything they don’t agree with racist and who don’t understand there is a center that they can just force left.
We’ll turn Texas blue might have been peak.
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.
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.
The dnc should have let Bernie Sanders become the nominatee like the voters wanted, instead of rigging the primary for Hillary.
I voted for Bernie in the primary, and I wanted him to win. I think the DNC was shady but I was under the impression that the voters DID choose Hillary.
I remember looking at which areas in MA went to Hillary, it was most of the non-rural ones.
The DNC favored Hillary over a guy who wasn’t even a Democrat, which shouldn’t really have been a surprise. Regardless of the DNC shenanigans the voters still could have choosen Bernie, they just didn’t.
This, NEVER rig the Primary if you can’t rig the General
It’s been adjudicated enough. Bernie was popular among the voters but Hillary moreso.
He had a second chance in 2020 and the advantages that came with being the frontrunner early on. Still lost.
Then all the selfish pieces of shit who voted for Biden in the 2020 primaries can elect him in 2024 all on their own.
Yeah they’re already planning on it. They’re not gonna waste time on people who will be forever litigating something that was 3 election cycles ago. Most Bernie supporters voted for Hillary, just like he asked them to. Wonder who he’ll support this time.
Yeah they’re already planning on it.
Great. Best of luck. Don’t blame us when Biden loses.
People attribute a lot more competence to the DNC then they’ve really demonstrated.
Like yeah HRC might have legitimately thought that way about Trump, but if her own campaigning didn’t win the election for herself suggesting it’s what put Trump over the finish line or even that it was of any significant contribution is pretty disingenuous.
Not to mention how the DNC and HRC aren’t able to mind control voters, like 99% of attempts to make Trump into the DNC boogeyman’s fault ignore the choice voters made to vote for him or to just not vote for Clinton, and the “shoved Clinton down our throats” narrative is pretty racist since it basically casts Clinton’s primary win through significant support by the black and poc vote as illegitimate.
We almost had a double down on that shit in 2020 but the “low information voter” dog whistlers just decided to blame everything on Clyburn this time.
I mean, I wouldn’t really say my critique is that they’re “competent.”
I would say elevating someone like Trump because you think it’s an easy win falls under “incompetent.”
Clinton isn’t the only reason he won, but acting like her campaign didn’t have an impact on Trump, and that her campaign centering him isn’t also part of why he ended up the nominee is acting like she never had any influence or impact at all, is also not true.
Clinton’s campaign literally had press access and so to act like her campaign didn’t influence what the media discussed is also brazenly ignoring what happened. Did she make Trump President? No. Did she give him way more opportunity to win than he would have had otherwise? Yes.
You don’t have to be competent for that.
I don’t have a problem with people critiquing Democrats, I have a problem with them arguing that voting for democrats is bad.
Yes!
Next up; How I spilled my Pepsi and why I blame coke.
Hubris was a factor, but it pales in comparison to the furor of the conservative voter base after 8 years of that brown feller.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign was poorly run, but she didn’t invent Trump or get millions of people to vote for him. Trump was set up by 25+ years of extremist Republican media - people like Limbaugh, Murdoch, O’Reilly - and enabled by the “liberal” mainstream media, who wouldn’t stop talking about his stupid shit for the 2 years leading up to the campaign, and are doing the same thing this time.
Just a reminder that Clinton had deep press connections and so acting like her elevating of Trump didn’t impact other media sources is a bit disingenuous. It was a campaign strategy to elevate Trump, and that included working with “friendly” journalists.
Did people forget that Correct the Record were literally keyboard warriors employed by the DNC to go and do exactly the kind of shit I’m complaining about online. Shitting all over progressives and forum sliding?
You forget the democratic party isn’t the progressive party. Look at New Hampshire. When Bidens not on the ballot people are writing him in. Democrats are a big tent you can’t just boot out the centrists or the neo-liberals and expect to win anything.
It sucks, and it double sucks because fascism is looming and the Dems are pretending everything is status quo. They sit in a high tower thinking progress is something serfs will win all on their on and when they do they’ll be just as protective of the status quo. It’s delusional but we need these guys or we need to turn the 50% of Americans who don’t even want to be involved.
End of day we can criticize Biden but we don’t fucking have to keep on bringing up Hillary.
Democrats are a big tent you can’t just boot out the centrists or the neo-liberals and expect to win anything.
Wrong. You can expect the neo-liberals to fall in line in the exact same way they expect progressives to fall in line.
Progressives are not uniquely enlightened, and you cannot reliably expect them to be the “bigger man” indefinitely.
Trump was an outsider candidate that took advantage of anti-establisment sentiment. He was barely a republican before 2016. He won because Hillary was incompetent and the DNC didn’t pick up on the anti-establishment vibes, and picked the most establishment candidate possible. Yes Republicans have been attacking Hillary since Bill got elected, but that wasn’t news to Democrats that didn’t care.
Roger stone began working on the Trump campaign in 2012.
I believe he also ran Trump’s 2000 campaign for president.
I’ll keep this advice in mind as I ponder what possible situation I could be in where it would be beneficial to know. Maybe if I decide to run for president?
Regardless of your opinion many of your responses are abusive and break community rules.
Anger and frustration over the political climate in the US is understandable but for someone who’s almost 50 you still need to work on your self control.
If you can’t engage in civil discourse then don’t reply to people, you only hurt your own cause.
I literally do blame the Democrats for Trump, and if you don’t, you weren’t paying attention.
I wasn’t paying attention?
The structure of government in the US, federal and state, has always been unfairly tilted in favor of “land” over “people.” The electoral college is the most glaring example, but even the concept of giving each state two Senators regardless of population, and then requiring bills to pass the Senate to become law, makes everything that happens in the federal government require the approval of people who have more political power than their number warrants. State governments are organized in the exact same way. The Three-Fifths Compromise did even more, giving slave states far more representation in the House than their free citizens warranted. The power and influence that comes with wealth tips the scales, too - again, in so many places where that wealth was extracted from human bondage and handed over to the slaveowners. Sprinkle some gerrymandering on top of that.
This was all in place well before any well-organized political parties existed in the United States.
The US has always, and by design, been arranged to benefit assholes. Trump and his supporters are just today’s assholes, and nobody else in the world is responsible for that.
A valid critique, thank you.
Trump won because he embraced the “fuck it all” voters.
… and there are a lot of those.
I’d like to see Biden address them, and he probably already did, we just didn’t hear about it because the media turned down his microphone years ago. He needs to show his balls on TV to get attention.
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.
I think I’m further along than you are, because I remember being terrified like that. Now I’m resigned to it, and planning for a time when I might have to feed myself and help around my community. And reading a lot of history to help with the idea of falling empires being a bad thing.
Still vote. It’s better than the alternative. But this is the end times and things are changing faster than our government is capable of dealing with.
Fucking “interesting times.”
Okay, but it’s not the fall that’s a problem. Empires end all the time.
It’s what comes in between the fall and the next thing.
Because it can be a consensus that things need to change and a rational breakdown of how. That’s more or less how it went last time for the US. That happens. That’s an option.
Or it can be a big messy fight, which is more or less how that went immediately after that for the US.
Or it can be total domination from the fascists, at which point it’s no longer a US problem and one starts wondering if there is a “next thing” at all.
I’m sorry to be the bearer of even more bad news, but hitting rock bottom is a lot of work. You don’t get to relax and enjoy the ride, I’m afraid.
I’m not worried. I’m sure you’ll get there. You can’t keep this up.
Oh, you can. For decades. Because if you don’t, a time will come when you don’t get a choice at all, and that can last for decades, too.
And no, I won’t get over it. The more disinterest and lack of urgency I see from people the less I get over it, in fact.
I think there’s a lack of remembered trauma, perhaps. It certainly doesn’t sink in to many Americans. That’s why the Germans immediately went out to protest, but the American frog is calmly simmering. You do you, but I find it irresponsible to keep everybody else in the splash zone.
In any case, I think the question has been answered.
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
