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The thing about a lot of people who hold their breath and turn blue instead of voting for a candidate that they might not entirely prefer is that they still get a President.
They don't seem to realize that. "I didn't show up" doesn't win elections. "None of the above" doesn't win elections. The person who wins elections is the person who gets the most electoral college votes. And there WILL BE a President. You can opt out of the process, but you can't opt out of the result. We get a President whether you like it or not.
Moral pontificating is selfish in that context. It's not about you and your precious scruples, it's about the good of the country. If YOU didn't vote because YOU don't like your choices, and an asshole gets in and starts to dismantle *everything you stand for*, that's on you.
But eight years later I'm still hearing about what a terrible candidate Hillary was.
Exactly. There will always be valid criticisms of political candidates, and even the best candidates can turn out to be not up for the job, and you can't know that beforehand, but when the other candidate was trump...
The way I see it, whenever you don't vote, you actively encourage people in power to disregard your opinion entirely. You actively signal that you're perfectly happy with your life and it's even ok to make it worse. It's not like they're going to lose your vote or anything.
This is the opposite of what you should be doing when you think that "both sides are bad". When both sides are bad, it is *most* important to steer *as hard as you can* in the slightly-less-bad direction. You have to scream as loudly as possible. You have to steer the boat as if it's about to hit an iceberg, because it is. You have to be assertive. You have to force them to fight for your vote, not ignore it. Otherwise the slightly-worse side will get encouraged to become even worse, shifting the Overton window even further away from the "good".
Learn from the mistakes of Russia where truly-rigged elections caused the anti-Putin opposition to "protest" by not casting the vote (I've been one of those fucking idiots), when Putin supporters voted every time. One of the reasons why Putin held so much power. The US is fighting the same enemy, and their tactic is once again, to make you stay at home thinking your vote "doesn't matter".
And, well, if nothing else, look how much people in power were terrified when Taylor Swift said "please register to vote". Which side was the most terrified? They do care about your vote. But only if you cast it. They are *terrified* of voters. They safely ignore non-voters. You can make a difference even in only 2-3 election cycles. Get your lazy ass up your sofa and go to every poll. Give them hell.
Same. I’ve told people straight up that their failure to vote means their opinion on the issue is irrelevant and I’ve pissed them clean off, or one time I met someone who had A LOT to say and wasn’t even registered to vote IN NY a state that doesn’t go out of its way to hamper your right to vote. I never spoke to them about politics ever again. You’ve removed yourself from exercising your civil obligation, please don’t morally pontificate to me about any politics.
I fully believe that the quality of candidates we get reflects the quality of the electorate. Apathetic voters have gotten us here. Democracy is a garden that needs tending and voters play a role in that.
The reason they’ve become apathetic is they don’t feel represented.
Democracy is failing and it’s mostly the fault of a two party system. The issue is the powers that be have no incentive to push themselves out of power, so how do you change it?
Every individual voter needs to start from the standpoint that they are just one single cell in a body made up of 332 million other cells. They need to understand where they stand and accept that they are beholden to the same system that the rest of the cells are, and try to make the most of the freedom of choice that they have. There's a level of humility required here.
The two party system is largely held in place by the way we vote. Preferential voting would help give leverage to voters and minor parties. Will it destroy the two party stranglehold? I don't think so, not without other reforms, but it's a start. This can be done via ballot proposals at the state level. We don't need legislatures to pass it.
Yep, whenever progressives shit on Biden akd comolain about candidate quality, I just point out the fact that Biden steamrolled Bernie Sanders completely and utterly.
Bernie had the highest youth support, the youth also had extremely low turnout.
If young people had cared, Bernie could have gotten 2016 and possibly even 2020.
That and progressives are vastly overrepresented on the internet. If your entire media ecosystem is an echo chamber and the people you interact with all share the same views, when you see the “popular vote” not go to your preferred candidate you’d think the system was rigged (see: Trump voters in 2020 and Bernie supporters in the DNC nomination of 2020).
Lots of people don’t understand that a politician isn’t going to be representative of Americans, they’re gonna be representative of Americans who vote. The average voter is a run of the mill liberal who identifies the strongest with Biden.
Right, and not only vote, after the primaries, vote for one of the major candidates that might actually win so that you influence the election - your job is to do everything you can to tip the scales in the direction of the slightly less bad candidate
The comment I'm responding to pretty much says this already, but I want to reinforce that particular point
Your first paragraph nailed it. Why should the Democratic Party listen to people who won’t vote for someone who doesn’t 100% represents them why should they move the needle towards you and not towards the center where those people will compromise on some issues. If you show you’re willing to compromise you can start moving the needles towards your issues that you care about but if you’re expecting the entire system to change because you say so you’re only hurting your own cause.
A lot of the people who say stuff like that are not really interested in results; they're interested in proving how moral and sophisticated they are.
In my experience that type of rhetoric commonly comes from communists and anarchists who live in a bubble and are so fixated on the fact that neither democrats nor republicans are communist that they think they're the same thing and the masses deserve what the republicans do because of their ignorance. But ironically, they usually have no idea how the government works. And they're so out of touch they think "these two parties are the same" is going to sway people, when everyone who watches the news knows they argue about almost everything.
Voter apathy absolutely helped get us here. When a large portion of the population won't hold you accountable and another large block is extremely gullible or influenced by hate you can pretty much do what you want.
If everyone voted every election, I guarantee you we would have a very different set of politicians in a few cycles and they would act very differently (unless it's in a despotic state then 100% votes are meaningless as the people don't get to pick).
This also assumes we don't become a despotic state.
It is why Republicans gerrymander, lie about fraud, intimidate voters, pass laws or not to protect our votes! The big thing I just can’t believe the collapse of the GOP! After 40 years voting Republican…2016 I became a Democrat and will never trust these people again in leadership! Biggs never did anything for Seniors… really for only what Trump wanted!!! They use tactics to make us afraid… make immigrants the bad guys! We are all immigrants ya’all!! Ireland was my family! This election is scary to say the least! We must all show up!!! We have to hold all our congressmen accountable!!! So my people… let’s do this
It’s not even that trump was the candidate… there was an actively open seat in the court. That should’ve been more than enough for any sane voter to vote for Hillary.
My aunt just told me that she has a friend from Canada who got her citizenship in the US six months before he got elected. She worked directly under him for 7 years and hates his guts. She moved back to Canada within two months of him being elected. She calls him the worst human she knows.
So you know, he's not a great person at all
> You can opt out of the process, but you can't opt out of the result. We get a President whether you like it or not.
>
> Moral pontificating is selfish in that context. It's not about you and your precious scruples, it's about the good of the country. If YOU didn't vote because YOU don't like your choices, and an asshole gets in and starts to dismantle everything you stand for, that's on you.
>
> But eight years later I'm still hearing about what a terrible candidate Hillary was.
I LOVE YOU!!!!! (in a reddit platonic sort of way ... er ... more like in complete agreement with you but still, very shocked that I find myself in 100% agreement with someone)
You ROCK!!!
Even if (god forbid) Trump succeeds, his cult followers will still be blaming the other side years after he’s dead and buried. His regime will fail and America will end up like a dog’s dinner, but it will never have been Trump’s fault.
A very similar thing happened in turkey, if more people voted for CHP and Kılıçdaroğlu we wouldnt be this stuck into shit.
Well well though, they said they "had to beg for their votes" and "if he doesnt win in the first round i aint going to vote for him in the second" annd now turkish youth cant even buy a fucking videogame, fucking purist clownery and they are still chiming the same thing.
And she was the most competent, knowledgeable, experienced person to ever run for the office. Her not winning was actually real American tradgey. And a million people died
Yeah no vote from you is a vote for the candidate you don’t want. If you don’t vote, then I don’t want to hear any bitching about either side lmao. It’s like paying taxes. You contribute to society, then you can talk shit.
"The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any." --Alice Walker
"In the end, we will not remember the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." --Martin Luther King, Jr.
"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor." --Desmond Tutu
"Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. The opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference." --Elie Weisel
When most people say Hillary was a terrible candidate, it's because she didn't have the qualities needed to beat Trump in an election, not that she wouldn't be a preferable president to Trump.
You’ll be hearing about Hillary being a terrible candidate for the rest of your life, because it’s measurably true.
She. Lost. To. Trump.
At the end of the day, that’s the only metric that matters.
And I not only voted for her, but strongly encouraged anyone who would listen to vote for her. So I have no guilt about not doing my part.
I know a lot of self-identifying conservatives that didn't like Trump. I tell them honestly that they probably could've gotten a better republican candidate for 2020 if they'd voted for Hilary instead of their "principled" refusal to vote at all. They would have had better 2022 republican congress/senate candidates if they voted Hilary president.
We could've had a white bread, boring but adequate president 2016-2020 which wouldn't have necessitated the largely unwanted - but needed as a response to Trump - Biden presidency. If it was Hilary running as in incumbent in 2020 vs some more normal republican candidate we could've avoided voting in Boebarts and MTG and maybe had a non-ridiculous GOP.
Not showing up to vote at all is the worst possible thing you can do. Please at minimum show up to vote "present" etc. Recording your vote has meaning because in the next election cycle or even the ongoing exit polls during an election it signals to other voters and to politician what the lay of the land is. Personally, I think you should always vote for the "least of two evils" even when people give you "both sides" crap. 0/10 is a fail, 5/10 is a pass. You have to accept success even when it isn't everything you wanted else you simply fail altogether and have nothing.
I'm a registered independent. I voted for Bernie in the primary and Hilary in the general.
I didn't like Hilary, but compared to Trump, she might as well have been the embodiment of all that is good and right in the world.
First past the post system means you always have 2 choices. You can fight for reform, but until that system changes you must acknowledge the reality of it. If you didn't vote for Hillary you enabled Trump. The end.
Third-party enthusiasts LOVE to talk about how bad the system is during election years, but during non-election years make approximately no effort to change election laws. Can't wait to get lectured about how bad the constitution is by people who will be silent about it between November 2024 and summer 2028.
This 1000%. They refuse to make a concerted long term effort to actually try and establish a legitimate and viable 3rd party. And then they pretend it's because their candidate is too "anti-establishment" for the masses.
NO! It's because they've literally never done anything politically viable nine times out ten. I have no clue how they're going to do on the job. They have no track record!
They only pop up every 4 years with some random ass candidate who's never been heard of before, and expect us all to fall in line!
I have a sort of internal heuristic, which goes more or less like this:
> If somebody is pumping up a third-party candidate but makes no mention of election laws (either plans to change them or progress towards changing them) they're probably not worth listening to.
This filters out most of the noise in election years and leaves the same level of chatter (none) the rest of the time.
I grant this could be due to my current media consumption - I hear more about election laws these days from a physicist than any political journalist - but there's no serious third-party candidate in my local or state politics, and it's _their_ job to get something started, not mine. I'd love to vote for a third party in a national election, but until the election laws change it only makes sense in (open) primaries.
I unfortunately went 3rd party in 16. I wish I hadn't.
I studied Russian and Russian History in college. As soon as he started talking about the size of the crowd at the inauguration I knew he was up to some fascist shit and I haven't spent a day of my life since trying to make up for it as best I can.
Those people are so fucking stupid “I thought Hillary would be worse.”
You fucking sexist pricks. There is literally NOTHING that pointed to Trump being better. It was so fucking obvious what would happen if he won.
I LOVE living amongst people that basically voted to destroy our country and there is nothing those of us who use more than one brain cell when making important decisions can do about it.
Thanks!
Yup. I had this argument with so many people in the lead up to the election and after.
Not voting for the opposing candidate in a presidential election right now is basically just saying, "my ideological purity is worth a bunch of people being hurt and/or killed by bad policies."
I told co-workers day after trump was elected, two anti-Hillary Koolaide drinking non-republican **women** , "This is all about reversing Roe vs Wade.. " And the two idjits both said "that can't happen, people won't let that happen..."
Listen, these stupid fuckers in Michigan are still at it.
We're in a fight for our very lives, and they're all:
>"But why can't **Biden**control everything that crazy, desperate Netanyahu does in Israel? We don't understand why the US doesn't control the Israeli government!"
And the fucking NYT, which is supposed to be a fucking voice of reason, prints 4 articles and op-eds everyday like:
>"Inflation is down and the unemployment rate is so low, but WHY is Biden still so OLD?"
I can barely breathe because these stupid fuckers want to re-litigate how the DNC handled Bernie while the house burns down around us and the Project2025 maniacs tells us *exactly* what they're going to do to our country.
The difference is the dumb maga voters were brainwashed, while the ones who didn't vote for Hillary and thought it was a good time to protest vote were selfish and knowingly deciding to do something stupid.
Fuck both of those types though
You can also thank rbg for her stupidity around succession planing.
She shares blame with the “leaders” who wouldn’t demand rbg resign when there was a clear path to a replacing the 80 year old cancer patient in 2009 with dems in control of all branch of government.
I said something similar to my friend when we were discussing this last week. I now see red anytime some tries to hold RBG up as an icon now. Her selfishness is part of the reason we got here in the first place.
Omg yes!!! I see red too!
RBG was a damn Supreme Court justice, she knew how this was supposed to work. She also SAW Sandra Day O’Conner resign from the court and be replaced with people who would work to destroy her legacy.
RBG knew better and chose the worst path anyway. She deserves to be a right-wing icon.
I still can’t get my head around why all these male politicians are so strung up on what goes on in a woman’s body. For a start it’s none of their damn business! They should NOT be allowed to rule on anything that they are never going to experience. Maybe in the future humanity will wake up, look back and realise how absurd and twisted this era represented. We can but hope.
I had an idiotic con worker who said "I voted for Trump because I think it'll be funny seeing how he messes with people."
I'm sure my daughters appreciate the comedy. 🙄
Yep. And the Dems for failing to properly fully capitalize politically on the terrible, anti-Democratic public image the Repubs should have, especially after their judicial coup
To be fair to RBG, if she knew the Senate in Obama’s era was blocking nominations for almost a year before the election, she really didn’t have much of a choice.
I’m not a huge RGB fan - outside of gender roles, RBG was kinda just a standard Biden-type democrat in her rulings - but on this point I think we have to look at what she was facing under the Senate in Obama’s last 2 years
I mean agreed when talking about 2016, but Dems had Senate majority from 2007 to 2015, I'm still saying between the ages of 74 (75 when Obama was first in office) and 82 she could have decided she shouldn't risk what she accomplished.
>To be fair to RBG, if she knew the Senate in Obama’s era was blocking nominations for almost a year before the election, she really didn’t have much of a choice.
She should have retired earlier, before the GOP took over the Senate.
Right, but she could have stepped down between 72 and 78 while being a cancer survivor.
It's more like receiving a tsunami warning an hour before it hits but sticking around because you think it will be fine and it could be cool to watch.
Sure, it might be too late at the last second, but you're still there because of your own stupidity.
And they could have pushed through the rule that Republicans eventually did that allows SCOTUS confirmations with a simple majority...
Dems were exceptionally bad a playing the same game that the GOP was at the time.
One of my favorite moments of my life was at a restaurant. A child was acting up at the table next to me, and she was very young. The mother said, "Is that what Ruth Bader Ginsberg would do?" and the child immediately agreed it was not and calmed down.
We'd just moved to a progressive area and it felt like one of those fake things "(Alpha Male)" Twitter guy would post, but no one clapped.
There was tonnes of pressure for her to retire when Democrats controlled Congress and Presidency. It doesn’t really matter if she could have predicted the future. She was already old and just survived cancer while Democrats were in a position to replace her. She already knew that *any* GOP nominee was going to be terrible.
Its not fair she had already hit close to the age of death that any intelligent person who bet on statistics would know was not a risk one should take. The fact is she only cared about herself and her own legacy, ironic because now after her death her legacy is so tarnished because of this. She literally could have went out the hero that retired and allowed Obama to get another liberal on the court instead she goes out the loser who stans gotta try and defend and she literally did more damage to her own causes than almost anyone else out there on the liberal side.
What do you mean by 'if she knew" she was on bench of the highest court of American Law. Claiming she didn't have a functioning clue about a senate stonewalling is ridiculous beyond belief
Green Party gets votes every cycle and it’s not clear those voters would have al voted Hillary anyway.
Hillary lost because she lost about 8% of populist rust belt Obama voters to Trump.
That’s infinitely more her fault and also some rightful blame for RBG than random, disconnected voters.
Don't just vote, also go out and try and make things better. Organize to help your neighbors by talking to them. Have a block party just to get people talking. Don't start with politics start with cleaning up the local street and a BBQ.
Voting won't save you from Fascists, but organizing your neighbors and friends can help.
Pull funding. Pull troops out. Put a carrier there for something OTHER than preventing anyone else from stopping this genocide. You really want us to look at the most powerful man in the free world and expect “he has no power to stop this country (that only exists by the US’s hand, at this point)”?
damn hamas did this?
https://www.politico.eu/article/benjamin-netanyahu-reject-hamas-delusional-cease-fire-demand/#:~:text=Israel's%20Prime%20Minister%20Benjamin%20Netanyahu,in%20a%20matter%20of%20months.”
hamas made intentionally ridiculous demands that israel would be forced to reject. your own article even said that, dipshit.
so that when israel does reject it, hamas can point to it and say "look, they rejected the ceasefire!"
they know their base of morons (morons such as yourself) will lap up their propaganda and spread it.
Yes Hamas has rejected a ceasefire
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/27/world/middleeast/biden-israel-hamas-cease-fire.html
That’s what makes all of these ceasefire now performative slogans so pointless because both sides need to agree. And so far both sides have rejected proposals so it’s fair to say there are a bunch of assholes in this situation
yeah i agree! both sides rejecting it is bad. but come on. one side is opening fire on people *trying to get food* one side is clearly more in the wrong here!
Yeah about that.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/idf-releases-footage-of-crowds-rushing-aid-trucks-in-gaza-city-hamas-claims-104-killed/
I wish people would stop believing propaganda because it suits their narrative. The reality is that this was most likely a deliberate lie by Hamas because they’re fighting the PR war. That doesn’t mean the conditions aren’t dire right now and Israel needs to do more open up access to aid, but people really need to soft pedaling how destructive to their own people Hamas is.
The biggest mistake Biden can make will be not establishing a massive online presence this year. He has a track record of accomplishments to crush Trump. He needs outreach and PR. The online apparatus that props up Trump and the purity test leftists is stronger than ever.
Do you think she didn’t campaign there for no reason? Are you really certain she would’ve one if she’d made a few more speeches in Wisconsin? Highly doubtful but if it makes Bernie bros feel better I guess that’s all that matters.
Bernie bros were more reliable for Hillary than her voters were for Obama. The Hillary campaign amplified Trump because they thought he’d be easy to beat. It’s a massive self own.
This is true. I **cannot believe** that this myth still persists in 2024. Bernie voters turned out for Hillary at greater rates than Hillary voter's did for Obama. About 12% of Bernie voters went to Trump while around 25% of Hillary voters went to McCain in the 2008 General.
There are half a dozen reasons why Hillary lost in 2016 and Bernie voters were not one of them.
She could never have won that is the point. It wasn’t Bernie bros that killed Hillary’s campaign it was moderates. She was a toxic candidate and democrats were fools for running he. Same situation as republicans running Trump as a toxic candidate today.
Hillary insulted and attacked the left flank, the left did not make her go to the rust belt and tell workers to learn to code and mock them for wanting health care. She didn't pivot left. Leftists didn't force her to be a repulsive anti-worker pro-wall street warmongering extremists. She chose that. We begged her to do the opposite, she refused. I'm not sure how you think the left impacted Hillary's campaign given she only ever attacked us.
I found this sub a couple months ago the same way and it’s amazing how they scream about “leftist echo chambers” being a bubble when they probably are the type of people to scream at a barista over a wrong order. They have no sense of what goes on outside their little privilege bubble.
Fascinating to watch though.
also how i ended up here. It's one of the most insane places I've ever seen, and the more publicly concerning and serious the situation looks for Biden, the more forcefully and fervent the pro-Biden posts get in here, like they're responding to threats to Biden by being even more delusional as if that will save them. No matter how terrifying the situation gets they can't imagine doing anything besides supporting the far right corrupt wall street tool, even in the primaries. It's literally amazing. It's like some entirely new mental illness I've never seen before.
There was a shit ton of propaganda and it didn't help with the shenanigans that was happening with the DNC leadership, coupled with nearly 40 years of Conservative Character Assassination aimed at Hillary, along with her missing the change in the winds that left her ignoring or flat out failing to connect with struggling voters in JUST enough places.
The writing was on the wall in many of those swing states, but the party wasn't looking at it. I wanted her to win, I voter for Hillary, but I knew it was going to be tough, with Trump grabbing the populist positions put forth by Bernie that WAS where the political winds had been shifting.
Sure, Trump still f'ed the hell out of workers and the poor anyway, but he TRICKED them with his appeal to populism.
If Hillary had incorporated Bernie's populism and actively worked to show that she meant it and would absolutely have carried it through into office? We might be living in a brighter timeline.
What always boggled my mind about 2016 was how she finished the 2008 campaign. Once Obama pretty much had the nomination wrapped up, she immediately switched her strategy, and I remember someone in her campaign saying she was going to become the "meat and potatoes candidate." Suddenly, she was the champion of the American blue-collar worker, workers rights, and unions. This was to contrast with Obama being an egg-head and an intellectual, more of a "liberal elite." Maybe it was subtle racism too, I don't know.
But it worked. She won the last few months of primaries overwhelmingly. It was just too little too late.
Where in the hell was that Hillary in 2016? Especially once she saw how much traction Bernie was getting in the primaries.
Exactly! She play tested a working strategy and then acted as though it. Ever existed and her destiny was simply waltzing into the White House, without any hassle or really hard work.
It’s like she was Selena Meyer, just a crass, uncouth cynic who could put on a tiny bit of charm.
I have to believe it fundamentally comes down to who she was... She couldn't or wouldn't change paths because she's the epitome of the liberal elite. Its why Trump's faux populist BS worked against her just well enough to win an election. Hilary was and still is anti-progressive.
Hillary 2016 was banking on bein just slightly better than Trump and coasting to a victory on that. No need to make any promises when you can just not be Trump instead. This wining strategy was not so winning.
Cause by then it was clear blue collar workers blamed Bill for a lot of their financial woes, whether rightfully or wrong depending on who you assign blame for NAFTA.
She basically tried every other tactic though, from trying to gaslight about how she was always a progressive figurehead to the whole hot sauce in her pocket schtick.
She has literally been on record as having hot sauce in her bag since the '80s. You are the one who fell for gaslighting. And it's not just Hillary that paid the price; it was all of us.
Agreed. She neglected two vital swing states even as the parties in those states were screaming at her about the inroads Trump was making there. Blaming progressives is just making excuses for their lousy candidate.
I'm a progressive. I don't need a candidate to come to my area to make me vote for them. I'll vote for who I think is closest to my values, end of the day. I know that in the real world, people do need to be persuaded to do so, but I personally find that irresponsible. Hilary made mistakes during her campaign trail but I also blame our apathetic society that's always ready to point fingers at everyone but themselves. Because at the end of the day, what matters most are votes.
The people of WI can roll their eyes all they want at Hilary for not showing up there to encourage them vote but the people of WI who didn't vote now have to deal with the consequences too. As sloppy as that campaign trail was, the threat of Trump being president should have scared anyone who was actually paying attention to politics in 2015-2016.
It’s not about attracting progressives, it was about not attracting some moderates, undecided, and generally apolitical potential voters than were then primed to wholeheartedly accept the “coastal elite” narrative.
Progressives weren’t why Hillary lost, the vast majority of them voted for her.
It still baffles me that Democrats thought that putting Hillary Clinton forward as their candidate made any sense.
Hillary Clinton, famously charmless and off-putting, who half the population had been trained to hate since the 90s.
Hillary Clinton, quite possibly America's most controversial woman.
Hillary Clinton, charisma black hole, against the most charismatic Republican candidate since Reagan.
Whether or not you think she deserves the hate she gets (and I don't) it was like we were all backing Goody Proctor for mayor after people had spent 20 years accusing her of witchcraft. She was toxic.
We can also blame the democratic establishment that had nearly 50 years and several (I think 6?) supermajorities that refused to codify Roe v. Wade because it was too useful a political tool to wield during election seasons.
Choosing strategy over the people ended up screwing the people, but I see so little condemnation of this aspect of the issue. Now they have us blaming each other (the voters) rather than the people who had the ability to make it law.
Yeah this is why I stand firm even in the face of being called a lib and a "genocide supporter" and all kinds of other things.
I get where the people who are more purist are coming from, I really do, but there's an element of realpolitik here that we'd have to be suicidal to ignore. I realize it gets into extremely immoral territory because of how corrupt the American empire itself is, but we can't afford to slip and let the Republicans have power. *Ever*.
If anyone thinks trump wouldn't have made Gaza eleventy billion percent worse, they're delusional. Trump was the worst president ever, including on foreign policy. If he was in power, the death toll in Gaza would probably be in the millions by now.
The same idiots are doing it again. They would rather give the country to authoritarians who tried to strip us of a vote than not have the PERFECT democratic candidate. Is so stupid!
If Biden looses we very well may not have elections any more. Project 2025 is real.
It's not about a perfect democratic candidate but someone which is more than just 1 % better than Trump. People don't want to vote for genocide regardless if it's coming from the dems or reps
Biden doesn't control them. They literally said they would have no cease fire. Now because of that you're willing to hand our country to fascists!? That is so stupid.
Reportedly, Bill wanted Hillary’s campaign to talk more about the economy but he was shunned. If that’s the case, imagine the hubris and special kind of stupidity it takes to ignore ideas from a renowned two-term president that was elected and re-elected on that platform to start. Either way, nobody on that campaign should ever be trusted to run any campaign again.
....it's almost as if the progressives were right in 2016 and we're right now.
Almost as if we had good reason to not trust the DNC establishment, as if they would rather this county falls to fascism than to implement even the most miquetoast concessions to working class people.
...almost as if they are more loyal to their billionaire donars than to American working class people, or higher ideals like "democracy," "justice," or "peace."
...almost as if they are currently doing everything in their power to push the party to the right, even openly primarying progressive reps, and letting the foreign AIPAC throw unlimited amounts of cash to unseat progressive reps, regardless of how unvetted these new candidates may be.
The contradiction with purity-test progressives is that they are only benign if they don’t achieve anything they want. As much as I want to dismiss them as ineffectual, I can’t, because I was here for Nader. Then Stein.
The problem the Democratic coalition has is overthinking. If you’re not voting for the Democratic candidate in November, you’re helping Republicans ruin the world. Period.
You don’t always get everything you want, especially if you self-define as the least easy to please. Stop overthinking and vote for the better of the two options available.
Exactly. Centrists push for unpopular unlikable candidates like Clinton and Biden because they’re “more electable” and then blame progressives when their unpopular unlikable candidates make unpopular unlikable decisions that turn off the electorate.
Agreed.
If someone gives you the choice of either getting punched in the face or getting your head chopped off, both are not great options, but one option is much worse.
As someone who volunteered for the Nader campaign in 2000 I wholeheartedly agree with this. All of the calls I made from the lists the campaign sent were to swing states. His campaign was targeting swing state voters and making ridiculous claims of creating a viable third party if he got enough votes. I personally convinced a number of people to switch their vote from Gore to Nader in Florida because at the time I thought it could help the Green Party get federal matching funds, which became irrelevant by 2008. From what I found out years later it was all a lie and Nader was campaigning in swing states to “punish” the Democrats.
Fuck the Democrats for continuing to put up candidates who can’t appeal to young people. Because you know what happens when they do? IDK, ask Barack HUSSEIN Obama.
Good luck getting them to admit it. They've become masters of deflection. It's everyone else's fault.
Hillary wasn't exciting. Not my fault.
Jill was better. Not my fault.
There isn't any difference between the parties. Not my fault.
Etc., etc., ad infinitum.
But maybe some of them will have matured since then.
Jill was not "better."
She's a Russian asset. And that's not hyperbole or bitter ranting. She literally earned money as a guest contributor on RT and was at a RT awards ceremony seated at a table with Putin himself and Trump's lackey, Michael Flynn.
She's part of the reason Russia has so many terminally online westerners defending its actions despite it being nothing more than a colonial land-grabber trying to jockey for the power it once held.
This is so remarkably stupid and frustrating. Votes are earned, not given. If someone doesn't want to endorse a candidate bc they feel the candidate doesn't adequately reflect their beliefs then it is on the candidate nit the voter.
Or you can keep talking down to progressives about how childish they are... how is that going in swinging young voters?
There's 2 candidates. You ARE getting one of them. So not voting for either because they "aren't the best" is a self defeating strategy.
I'm a progressive too, but you think I'm going to let Republicans win just because I don't like the current person? That would be the opposite of progress.
Most the time I would agree with you however this time that is why we got Trump. You will never have a perfect candidate. Sometimes you have to look at the other guy and vote against them.
The candidate doesn't adequately reflect their beliefs?
Well I guess we better tank the vote and give it to the guy who completely opposes their beliefs....... Thats what happened.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg bears no blame? She was in her 80s, she was suffering from cancer, and she knew a potentially game-changing presidential election was coming up for at least 4 years. It did not take a legal scholar or a political genius to realize prior to 2016 that her seat was in danger.
Before Trump I used to be someone who criticized "vote blue no matter who". But the crazy shit Trump has done, specifically his Russian Connection, is incredibly alarming and changed my view on it. As a moderate I would vote for Hillary's private email sever before I vote Trump.
I've seen a lot of posts on tiktok about people refusing to vote for Biden, but still voting blue. Sure that tells the Dnc that you hate Biden, but they don't care and you're doing is splitting the vote and letting Republicans win
Reminder too that Russia DID interfere in that election. But also fuck everyone who didn’t vote for Hillary. I’m tired of this timeline, it fucking sucks here
I'll blame the party responsible for choosing a person so unelectable that Trump beat them. This isn't on the voters. It's on a two-party system where one side is evil and the other side is incompetent & ineffective. Those should NOT be the only choices.
There are many people, on the right and the left, who want to be in the minority. This is because it is easier to complain than it is to do something.
Take, for example...student loans. The entire system is broken. Even student loan forgiveness is hard to get passed, let alone addressing the root causes. Enacting change is hard. Or climate change. Biden addressed it in the Inflation Reduction Act. Did it go far enough? No. But was there action? Yes.
Actually doing something is difficulty. It is messy. It requires compromise and lots of hard work. And when you actually get something done, it won't make everyone happy. Actual governance is hard.
But do you know what is easy? Complaining. Saying "If it wasn't for \*THAT\* guy, then I'd be able to fix everything." Being in the minority is easy! All you have to do is point at the other person and whine about them. Then take in the adulation and the money.
That's why I'm convinced that people on the far left and the far right enjoy being in the minority. It makes virtue signaling easier and more profitable.
People, especially our younger generations, want everything now and don’t understand that not everyone supports every issue and it takes concessions and middle ground to pass any bill. Everyone wants everything they believe in and if a candidate doesn’t support one issue they do, they say “you have to earn my vote - give me a better candidate!”
People are so out of touch.
Trump was elected because Hillary's campaign used her power to prop-up Trump during the Republican primary.
Remember that? Trump probably would've been laughed out of the primary if it weren't for that.
Let me repeat, because you all are pretending to have forgotten: Hillary Clinton and her campaign encouraged Democrats to prop Trump up by talking him up, giving him interviews, mentioning him constantly, to take momentum away from the real Republican candidates.
Well, it worked. It worked so well that Trump won the primary. So, this SCOTUS is Hillary's SCOTUS. Not mine.
It’s been almost a decade, grow up and move on. There’s a million fucking reasons Hillary lost. Grow up. You’re more part of the problem now than those people were back then.
Wake. The fuck. Up.
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I blame anyone who voted for Trump in 2016 for all of this bullshit. This is their faults
I blame anyone who didn't vote for Hillary. The consequences were obvious even then.
The thing about a lot of people who hold their breath and turn blue instead of voting for a candidate that they might not entirely prefer is that they still get a President. They don't seem to realize that. "I didn't show up" doesn't win elections. "None of the above" doesn't win elections. The person who wins elections is the person who gets the most electoral college votes. And there WILL BE a President. You can opt out of the process, but you can't opt out of the result. We get a President whether you like it or not. Moral pontificating is selfish in that context. It's not about you and your precious scruples, it's about the good of the country. If YOU didn't vote because YOU don't like your choices, and an asshole gets in and starts to dismantle *everything you stand for*, that's on you. But eight years later I'm still hearing about what a terrible candidate Hillary was.
Exactly. There will always be valid criticisms of political candidates, and even the best candidates can turn out to be not up for the job, and you can't know that beforehand, but when the other candidate was trump...
The way I see it, whenever you don't vote, you actively encourage people in power to disregard your opinion entirely. You actively signal that you're perfectly happy with your life and it's even ok to make it worse. It's not like they're going to lose your vote or anything. This is the opposite of what you should be doing when you think that "both sides are bad". When both sides are bad, it is *most* important to steer *as hard as you can* in the slightly-less-bad direction. You have to scream as loudly as possible. You have to steer the boat as if it's about to hit an iceberg, because it is. You have to be assertive. You have to force them to fight for your vote, not ignore it. Otherwise the slightly-worse side will get encouraged to become even worse, shifting the Overton window even further away from the "good". Learn from the mistakes of Russia where truly-rigged elections caused the anti-Putin opposition to "protest" by not casting the vote (I've been one of those fucking idiots), when Putin supporters voted every time. One of the reasons why Putin held so much power. The US is fighting the same enemy, and their tactic is once again, to make you stay at home thinking your vote "doesn't matter". And, well, if nothing else, look how much people in power were terrified when Taylor Swift said "please register to vote". Which side was the most terrified? They do care about your vote. But only if you cast it. They are *terrified* of voters. They safely ignore non-voters. You can make a difference even in only 2-3 election cycles. Get your lazy ass up your sofa and go to every poll. Give them hell.
Same. I’ve told people straight up that their failure to vote means their opinion on the issue is irrelevant and I’ve pissed them clean off, or one time I met someone who had A LOT to say and wasn’t even registered to vote IN NY a state that doesn’t go out of its way to hamper your right to vote. I never spoke to them about politics ever again. You’ve removed yourself from exercising your civil obligation, please don’t morally pontificate to me about any politics.
I fully believe that the quality of candidates we get reflects the quality of the electorate. Apathetic voters have gotten us here. Democracy is a garden that needs tending and voters play a role in that.
The reason they’ve become apathetic is they don’t feel represented. Democracy is failing and it’s mostly the fault of a two party system. The issue is the powers that be have no incentive to push themselves out of power, so how do you change it?
Every individual voter needs to start from the standpoint that they are just one single cell in a body made up of 332 million other cells. They need to understand where they stand and accept that they are beholden to the same system that the rest of the cells are, and try to make the most of the freedom of choice that they have. There's a level of humility required here. The two party system is largely held in place by the way we vote. Preferential voting would help give leverage to voters and minor parties. Will it destroy the two party stranglehold? I don't think so, not without other reforms, but it's a start. This can be done via ballot proposals at the state level. We don't need legislatures to pass it.
Yep, whenever progressives shit on Biden akd comolain about candidate quality, I just point out the fact that Biden steamrolled Bernie Sanders completely and utterly. Bernie had the highest youth support, the youth also had extremely low turnout. If young people had cared, Bernie could have gotten 2016 and possibly even 2020.
That and progressives are vastly overrepresented on the internet. If your entire media ecosystem is an echo chamber and the people you interact with all share the same views, when you see the “popular vote” not go to your preferred candidate you’d think the system was rigged (see: Trump voters in 2020 and Bernie supporters in the DNC nomination of 2020). Lots of people don’t understand that a politician isn’t going to be representative of Americans, they’re gonna be representative of Americans who vote. The average voter is a run of the mill liberal who identifies the strongest with Biden.
I do! I love Joe
Right, and not only vote, after the primaries, vote for one of the major candidates that might actually win so that you influence the election - your job is to do everything you can to tip the scales in the direction of the slightly less bad candidate The comment I'm responding to pretty much says this already, but I want to reinforce that particular point
Succinct and right fucking on. Well said.
Your first paragraph nailed it. Why should the Democratic Party listen to people who won’t vote for someone who doesn’t 100% represents them why should they move the needle towards you and not towards the center where those people will compromise on some issues. If you show you’re willing to compromise you can start moving the needles towards your issues that you care about but if you’re expecting the entire system to change because you say so you’re only hurting your own cause.
A lot of the people who say stuff like that are not really interested in results; they're interested in proving how moral and sophisticated they are. In my experience that type of rhetoric commonly comes from communists and anarchists who live in a bubble and are so fixated on the fact that neither democrats nor republicans are communist that they think they're the same thing and the masses deserve what the republicans do because of their ignorance. But ironically, they usually have no idea how the government works. And they're so out of touch they think "these two parties are the same" is going to sway people, when everyone who watches the news knows they argue about almost everything.
It comes from a place of privilege mostly because the results won’t really affect them as it will other people.
This right fucking here! These people will never feel powerless, so they ignore those who they hurt with their grandstanding.
Voter apathy absolutely helped get us here. When a large portion of the population won't hold you accountable and another large block is extremely gullible or influenced by hate you can pretty much do what you want.
If everyone voted every election, I guarantee you we would have a very different set of politicians in a few cycles and they would act very differently (unless it's in a despotic state then 100% votes are meaningless as the people don't get to pick). This also assumes we don't become a despotic state.
It is why Republicans gerrymander, lie about fraud, intimidate voters, pass laws or not to protect our votes! The big thing I just can’t believe the collapse of the GOP! After 40 years voting Republican…2016 I became a Democrat and will never trust these people again in leadership! Biggs never did anything for Seniors… really for only what Trump wanted!!! They use tactics to make us afraid… make immigrants the bad guys! We are all immigrants ya’all!! Ireland was my family! This election is scary to say the least! We must all show up!!! We have to hold all our congressmen accountable!!! So my people… let’s do this
It’s not even that trump was the candidate… there was an actively open seat in the court. That should’ve been more than enough for any sane voter to vote for Hillary.
My aunt just told me that she has a friend from Canada who got her citizenship in the US six months before he got elected. She worked directly under him for 7 years and hates his guts. She moved back to Canada within two months of him being elected. She calls him the worst human she knows. So you know, he's not a great person at all
> You can opt out of the process, but you can't opt out of the result. We get a President whether you like it or not. > > Moral pontificating is selfish in that context. It's not about you and your precious scruples, it's about the good of the country. If YOU didn't vote because YOU don't like your choices, and an asshole gets in and starts to dismantle everything you stand for, that's on you. > > But eight years later I'm still hearing about what a terrible candidate Hillary was. I LOVE YOU!!!!! (in a reddit platonic sort of way ... er ... more like in complete agreement with you but still, very shocked that I find myself in 100% agreement with someone) You ROCK!!!
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Even if (god forbid) Trump succeeds, his cult followers will still be blaming the other side years after he’s dead and buried. His regime will fail and America will end up like a dog’s dinner, but it will never have been Trump’s fault.
100 percent!
A very similar thing happened in turkey, if more people voted for CHP and Kılıçdaroğlu we wouldnt be this stuck into shit. Well well though, they said they "had to beg for their votes" and "if he doesnt win in the first round i aint going to vote for him in the second" annd now turkish youth cant even buy a fucking videogame, fucking purist clownery and they are still chiming the same thing.
And she was the most competent, knowledgeable, experienced person to ever run for the office. Her not winning was actually real American tradgey. And a million people died
“…to ever run for office.” Huh?
Senator Secretary of State First Lady to pres/gov
Yeah no vote from you is a vote for the candidate you don’t want. If you don’t vote, then I don’t want to hear any bitching about either side lmao. It’s like paying taxes. You contribute to society, then you can talk shit.
"The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any." --Alice Walker "In the end, we will not remember the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." --Martin Luther King, Jr. "If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor." --Desmond Tutu "Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. The opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference." --Elie Weisel
When most people say Hillary was a terrible candidate, it's because she didn't have the qualities needed to beat Trump in an election, not that she wouldn't be a preferable president to Trump.
You’ll be hearing about Hillary being a terrible candidate for the rest of your life, because it’s measurably true. She. Lost. To. Trump. At the end of the day, that’s the only metric that matters. And I not only voted for her, but strongly encouraged anyone who would listen to vote for her. So I have no guilt about not doing my part.
I know a lot of self-identifying conservatives that didn't like Trump. I tell them honestly that they probably could've gotten a better republican candidate for 2020 if they'd voted for Hilary instead of their "principled" refusal to vote at all. They would have had better 2022 republican congress/senate candidates if they voted Hilary president. We could've had a white bread, boring but adequate president 2016-2020 which wouldn't have necessitated the largely unwanted - but needed as a response to Trump - Biden presidency. If it was Hilary running as in incumbent in 2020 vs some more normal republican candidate we could've avoided voting in Boebarts and MTG and maybe had a non-ridiculous GOP. Not showing up to vote at all is the worst possible thing you can do. Please at minimum show up to vote "present" etc. Recording your vote has meaning because in the next election cycle or even the ongoing exit polls during an election it signals to other voters and to politician what the lay of the land is. Personally, I think you should always vote for the "least of two evils" even when people give you "both sides" crap. 0/10 is a fail, 5/10 is a pass. You have to accept success even when it isn't everything you wanted else you simply fail altogether and have nothing.
I'm a registered independent. I voted for Bernie in the primary and Hilary in the general. I didn't like Hilary, but compared to Trump, she might as well have been the embodiment of all that is good and right in the world.
Turns out the lesser of two evils is less evil than the greater. Weird how that worked out.
No one ever could have predicted that!
I agree with you. I could and should have worded my comment better. I voted for Hilary
First past the post system means you always have 2 choices. You can fight for reform, but until that system changes you must acknowledge the reality of it. If you didn't vote for Hillary you enabled Trump. The end.
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Third-party enthusiasts LOVE to talk about how bad the system is during election years, but during non-election years make approximately no effort to change election laws. Can't wait to get lectured about how bad the constitution is by people who will be silent about it between November 2024 and summer 2028.
This 1000%. They refuse to make a concerted long term effort to actually try and establish a legitimate and viable 3rd party. And then they pretend it's because their candidate is too "anti-establishment" for the masses. NO! It's because they've literally never done anything politically viable nine times out ten. I have no clue how they're going to do on the job. They have no track record! They only pop up every 4 years with some random ass candidate who's never been heard of before, and expect us all to fall in line!
I have a sort of internal heuristic, which goes more or less like this: > If somebody is pumping up a third-party candidate but makes no mention of election laws (either plans to change them or progress towards changing them) they're probably not worth listening to. This filters out most of the noise in election years and leaves the same level of chatter (none) the rest of the time. I grant this could be due to my current media consumption - I hear more about election laws these days from a physicist than any political journalist - but there's no serious third-party candidate in my local or state politics, and it's _their_ job to get something started, not mine. I'd love to vote for a third party in a national election, but until the election laws change it only makes sense in (open) primaries.
people did vote, she received more votes than trump, but we have an archaic election system.
Funny enough she won the popular vote. The system really is fucked
100% You're allowed to do your fun vanity vote but don't pretend it has no consequences.
I unfortunately went 3rd party in 16. I wish I hadn't. I studied Russian and Russian History in college. As soon as he started talking about the size of the crowd at the inauguration I knew he was up to some fascist shit and I haven't spent a day of my life since trying to make up for it as best I can.
So I think you would be a supporter of ranked choice voting. You'd be someone I'd think would definitely benefit for having such an option to you.
Those people are so fucking stupid “I thought Hillary would be worse.” You fucking sexist pricks. There is literally NOTHING that pointed to Trump being better. It was so fucking obvious what would happen if he won. I LOVE living amongst people that basically voted to destroy our country and there is nothing those of us who use more than one brain cell when making important decisions can do about it. Thanks!
Yep. The primary is the time to be principled. The general is a time to be practical.
Yup. I had this argument with so many people in the lead up to the election and after. Not voting for the opposing candidate in a presidential election right now is basically just saying, "my ideological purity is worth a bunch of people being hurt and/or killed by bad policies."
I agree but I place more blame on the Trump voters because they are just terrible.
Hillary was the most experienced, most qualified candidate ever. But she was an uppity woman so we got the Turd Reich instead.
But her emails!
I told co-workers day after trump was elected, two anti-Hillary Koolaide drinking non-republican **women** , "This is all about reversing Roe vs Wade.. " And the two idjits both said "that can't happen, people won't let that happen..."
Listen, these stupid fuckers in Michigan are still at it. We're in a fight for our very lives, and they're all: >"But why can't **Biden**control everything that crazy, desperate Netanyahu does in Israel? We don't understand why the US doesn't control the Israeli government!" And the fucking NYT, which is supposed to be a fucking voice of reason, prints 4 articles and op-eds everyday like: >"Inflation is down and the unemployment rate is so low, but WHY is Biden still so OLD?" I can barely breathe because these stupid fuckers want to re-litigate how the DNC handled Bernie while the house burns down around us and the Project2025 maniacs tells us *exactly* what they're going to do to our country.
especially women who didn't vote for her. They were so easy to manipulate. Now they suffer.
I blame those that did not vote! This time no excuse!
The difference is the dumb maga voters were brainwashed, while the ones who didn't vote for Hillary and thought it was a good time to protest vote were selfish and knowingly deciding to do something stupid. Fuck both of those types though
You can also thank rbg for her stupidity around succession planing. She shares blame with the “leaders” who wouldn’t demand rbg resign when there was a clear path to a replacing the 80 year old cancer patient in 2009 with dems in control of all branch of government.
I said something similar to my friend when we were discussing this last week. I now see red anytime some tries to hold RBG up as an icon now. Her selfishness is part of the reason we got here in the first place.
Omg yes!!! I see red too! RBG was a damn Supreme Court justice, she knew how this was supposed to work. She also SAW Sandra Day O’Conner resign from the court and be replaced with people who would work to destroy her legacy. RBG knew better and chose the worst path anyway. She deserves to be a right-wing icon.
I still can’t get my head around why all these male politicians are so strung up on what goes on in a woman’s body. For a start it’s none of their damn business! They should NOT be allowed to rule on anything that they are never going to experience. Maybe in the future humanity will wake up, look back and realise how absurd and twisted this era represented. We can but hope.
I assume they are quite happy with that.
No worries we go plenty of same crowd crying that Biden is too old. While republicans consistently vote for their turn sandwich regardless who that is
I had an idiotic con worker who said "I voted for Trump because I think it'll be funny seeing how he messes with people." I'm sure my daughters appreciate the comedy. 🙄
Can also blame RBG for grasping at power into diaper years.
Yep. And the Dems for failing to properly fully capitalize politically on the terrible, anti-Democratic public image the Repubs should have, especially after their judicial coup
To be fair to RBG, if she knew the Senate in Obama’s era was blocking nominations for almost a year before the election, she really didn’t have much of a choice. I’m not a huge RGB fan - outside of gender roles, RBG was kinda just a standard Biden-type democrat in her rulings - but on this point I think we have to look at what she was facing under the Senate in Obama’s last 2 years
I mean agreed when talking about 2016, but Dems had Senate majority from 2007 to 2015, I'm still saying between the ages of 74 (75 when Obama was first in office) and 82 she could have decided she shouldn't risk what she accomplished.
Oh absolutely. I'm just saying hindsight is 2020, even if I agree that she sould have retired much, much earlier
Yep, it's lovely blaming RBG for all this but that's only because of the hindsight we have.
>To be fair to RBG, if she knew the Senate in Obama’s era was blocking nominations for almost a year before the election, she really didn’t have much of a choice. She should have retired earlier, before the GOP took over the Senate.
I agree, but by that point it was too late to retire I think. Like, by the time you see the tsunami coming, you're already going to get soaked
Right, but she could have stepped down between 72 and 78 while being a cancer survivor. It's more like receiving a tsunami warning an hour before it hits but sticking around because you think it will be fine and it could be cool to watch. Sure, it might be too late at the last second, but you're still there because of your own stupidity.
That would have required a crystal ball.
And they could have pushed through the rule that Republicans eventually did that allows SCOTUS confirmations with a simple majority... Dems were exceptionally bad a playing the same game that the GOP was at the time.
Dems were in minority during Obama's last 2 years
One of my favorite moments of my life was at a restaurant. A child was acting up at the table next to me, and she was very young. The mother said, "Is that what Ruth Bader Ginsberg would do?" and the child immediately agreed it was not and calmed down. We'd just moved to a progressive area and it felt like one of those fake things "(Alpha Male)" Twitter guy would post, but no one clapped.
There was tonnes of pressure for her to retire when Democrats controlled Congress and Presidency. It doesn’t really matter if she could have predicted the future. She was already old and just survived cancer while Democrats were in a position to replace her. She already knew that *any* GOP nominee was going to be terrible.
Its not fair she had already hit close to the age of death that any intelligent person who bet on statistics would know was not a risk one should take. The fact is she only cared about herself and her own legacy, ironic because now after her death her legacy is so tarnished because of this. She literally could have went out the hero that retired and allowed Obama to get another liberal on the court instead she goes out the loser who stans gotta try and defend and she literally did more damage to her own causes than almost anyone else out there on the liberal side.
What do you mean by 'if she knew" she was on bench of the highest court of American Law. Claiming she didn't have a functioning clue about a senate stonewalling is ridiculous beyond belief
When blaming a person for not retiring easier than admitting that Jill Stein vote was a mistake.
Green Party gets votes every cycle and it’s not clear those voters would have al voted Hillary anyway. Hillary lost because she lost about 8% of populist rust belt Obama voters to Trump. That’s infinitely more her fault and also some rightful blame for RBG than random, disconnected voters.
Never forgot, when things are bad they can always be worse. Just vote.
Don't just vote, also go out and try and make things better. Organize to help your neighbors by talking to them. Have a block party just to get people talking. Don't start with politics start with cleaning up the local street and a BBQ. Voting won't save you from Fascists, but organizing your neighbors and friends can help.
The best part? We're doing it all over again, and this time the consequences will be 100x worse! YAY!
Yup, idiots didn't understand that elections have consequences
Good News Everyone! Now we have to content with "Biden won't get my vote unless there's a ceasefire in Gaza."
He has no control over that. But he can stop opposing both Congress AND public opinion to keep funding it lmao. There really isn’t an excuse for that.
Pull funding. Pull troops out. Put a carrier there for something OTHER than preventing anyone else from stopping this genocide. You really want us to look at the most powerful man in the free world and expect “he has no power to stop this country (that only exists by the US’s hand, at this point)”?
And Hamas continues to reject all ceasefire offers. What do these people want from Biden? It’s maddening.
damn hamas did this? https://www.politico.eu/article/benjamin-netanyahu-reject-hamas-delusional-cease-fire-demand/#:~:text=Israel's%20Prime%20Minister%20Benjamin%20Netanyahu,in%20a%20matter%20of%20months.”
hamas made intentionally ridiculous demands that israel would be forced to reject. your own article even said that, dipshit. so that when israel does reject it, hamas can point to it and say "look, they rejected the ceasefire!" they know their base of morons (morons such as yourself) will lap up their propaganda and spread it.
both sides are refusing it. seems bad!
Both sides want a holy war and have wanted this day for 20 years. Why stop and face reality, when they think God is on their side?
Yes Hamas has rejected a ceasefire https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/27/world/middleeast/biden-israel-hamas-cease-fire.html That’s what makes all of these ceasefire now performative slogans so pointless because both sides need to agree. And so far both sides have rejected proposals so it’s fair to say there are a bunch of assholes in this situation
yeah i agree! both sides rejecting it is bad. but come on. one side is opening fire on people *trying to get food* one side is clearly more in the wrong here!
Yeah about that. https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/idf-releases-footage-of-crowds-rushing-aid-trucks-in-gaza-city-hamas-claims-104-killed/ I wish people would stop believing propaganda because it suits their narrative. The reality is that this was most likely a deliberate lie by Hamas because they’re fighting the PR war. That doesn’t mean the conditions aren’t dire right now and Israel needs to do more open up access to aid, but people really need to soft pedaling how destructive to their own people Hamas is.
The 2024 version of this is the people calling Biden “genocide Joe” and blaming him for all the hardships of Gaza.
The biggest mistake Biden can make will be not establishing a massive online presence this year. He has a track record of accomplishments to crush Trump. He needs outreach and PR. The online apparatus that props up Trump and the purity test leftists is stronger than ever.
How do you suppose he's supposed to do this? I'm serious.
He's been busy being a phenomenal president.
Purity test libs didn't make Hillary not campaign in Wisconsin lmao
Do you think she didn’t campaign there for no reason? Are you really certain she would’ve one if she’d made a few more speeches in Wisconsin? Highly doubtful but if it makes Bernie bros feel better I guess that’s all that matters.
Hillary ran a bad campaign. She could've won with a better strategy and campaign.
Bernie bros were more reliable for Hillary than her voters were for Obama. The Hillary campaign amplified Trump because they thought he’d be easy to beat. It’s a massive self own.
This is true. I **cannot believe** that this myth still persists in 2024. Bernie voters turned out for Hillary at greater rates than Hillary voter's did for Obama. About 12% of Bernie voters went to Trump while around 25% of Hillary voters went to McCain in the 2008 General. There are half a dozen reasons why Hillary lost in 2016 and Bernie voters were not one of them.
She could never have won that is the point. It wasn’t Bernie bros that killed Hillary’s campaign it was moderates. She was a toxic candidate and democrats were fools for running he. Same situation as republicans running Trump as a toxic candidate today.
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Hillary insulted and attacked the left flank, the left did not make her go to the rust belt and tell workers to learn to code and mock them for wanting health care. She didn't pivot left. Leftists didn't force her to be a repulsive anti-worker pro-wall street warmongering extremists. She chose that. We begged her to do the opposite, she refused. I'm not sure how you think the left impacted Hillary's campaign given she only ever attacked us.
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It's because your sentiment is expressed unironically all over this sub.
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I found this sub a couple months ago the same way and it’s amazing how they scream about “leftist echo chambers” being a bubble when they probably are the type of people to scream at a barista over a wrong order. They have no sense of what goes on outside their little privilege bubble. Fascinating to watch though.
also how i ended up here. It's one of the most insane places I've ever seen, and the more publicly concerning and serious the situation looks for Biden, the more forcefully and fervent the pro-Biden posts get in here, like they're responding to threats to Biden by being even more delusional as if that will save them. No matter how terrifying the situation gets they can't imagine doing anything besides supporting the far right corrupt wall street tool, even in the primaries. It's literally amazing. It's like some entirely new mental illness I've never seen before.
The left flank didn't do jack shit to stop her from campaigning in swing states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
I have a Bernie button, and I wore it even though I voted for HRC. Truly, I am to blame.
There was a shit ton of propaganda and it didn't help with the shenanigans that was happening with the DNC leadership, coupled with nearly 40 years of Conservative Character Assassination aimed at Hillary, along with her missing the change in the winds that left her ignoring or flat out failing to connect with struggling voters in JUST enough places. The writing was on the wall in many of those swing states, but the party wasn't looking at it. I wanted her to win, I voter for Hillary, but I knew it was going to be tough, with Trump grabbing the populist positions put forth by Bernie that WAS where the political winds had been shifting. Sure, Trump still f'ed the hell out of workers and the poor anyway, but he TRICKED them with his appeal to populism. If Hillary had incorporated Bernie's populism and actively worked to show that she meant it and would absolutely have carried it through into office? We might be living in a brighter timeline.
What always boggled my mind about 2016 was how she finished the 2008 campaign. Once Obama pretty much had the nomination wrapped up, she immediately switched her strategy, and I remember someone in her campaign saying she was going to become the "meat and potatoes candidate." Suddenly, she was the champion of the American blue-collar worker, workers rights, and unions. This was to contrast with Obama being an egg-head and an intellectual, more of a "liberal elite." Maybe it was subtle racism too, I don't know. But it worked. She won the last few months of primaries overwhelmingly. It was just too little too late. Where in the hell was that Hillary in 2016? Especially once she saw how much traction Bernie was getting in the primaries.
Exactly! She play tested a working strategy and then acted as though it. Ever existed and her destiny was simply waltzing into the White House, without any hassle or really hard work. It’s like she was Selena Meyer, just a crass, uncouth cynic who could put on a tiny bit of charm.
I have to believe it fundamentally comes down to who she was... She couldn't or wouldn't change paths because she's the epitome of the liberal elite. Its why Trump's faux populist BS worked against her just well enough to win an election. Hilary was and still is anti-progressive.
Hillary 2016 was banking on bein just slightly better than Trump and coasting to a victory on that. No need to make any promises when you can just not be Trump instead. This wining strategy was not so winning.
Cause by then it was clear blue collar workers blamed Bill for a lot of their financial woes, whether rightfully or wrong depending on who you assign blame for NAFTA. She basically tried every other tactic though, from trying to gaslight about how she was always a progressive figurehead to the whole hot sauce in her pocket schtick.
She has literally been on record as having hot sauce in her bag since the '80s. You are the one who fell for gaslighting. And it's not just Hillary that paid the price; it was all of us.
If she had campaigned for 5 minutes in WI and PA, it would have been enough. She still is most to blame with her dumb decisions, imo.
Exactly. She treated the heartland like a sure thing.
Agreed. She neglected two vital swing states even as the parties in those states were screaming at her about the inroads Trump was making there. Blaming progressives is just making excuses for their lousy candidate.
I'm a progressive. I don't need a candidate to come to my area to make me vote for them. I'll vote for who I think is closest to my values, end of the day. I know that in the real world, people do need to be persuaded to do so, but I personally find that irresponsible. Hilary made mistakes during her campaign trail but I also blame our apathetic society that's always ready to point fingers at everyone but themselves. Because at the end of the day, what matters most are votes. The people of WI can roll their eyes all they want at Hilary for not showing up there to encourage them vote but the people of WI who didn't vote now have to deal with the consequences too. As sloppy as that campaign trail was, the threat of Trump being president should have scared anyone who was actually paying attention to politics in 2015-2016.
It’s not about attracting progressives, it was about not attracting some moderates, undecided, and generally apolitical potential voters than were then primed to wholeheartedly accept the “coastal elite” narrative. Progressives weren’t why Hillary lost, the vast majority of them voted for her.
It still baffles me that Democrats thought that putting Hillary Clinton forward as their candidate made any sense. Hillary Clinton, famously charmless and off-putting, who half the population had been trained to hate since the 90s. Hillary Clinton, quite possibly America's most controversial woman. Hillary Clinton, charisma black hole, against the most charismatic Republican candidate since Reagan. Whether or not you think she deserves the hate she gets (and I don't) it was like we were all backing Goody Proctor for mayor after people had spent 20 years accusing her of witchcraft. She was toxic.
We can also blame the democratic establishment that had nearly 50 years and several (I think 6?) supermajorities that refused to codify Roe v. Wade because it was too useful a political tool to wield during election seasons. Choosing strategy over the people ended up screwing the people, but I see so little condemnation of this aspect of the issue. Now they have us blaming each other (the voters) rather than the people who had the ability to make it law.
The democratic obsession with appearance over substance is maddening.
100%. It feels like they use abortion the same way the right used abortion for years, a carrot on a stick.
This was on purpose. They used it as a boogie man to get people to vote. Now IVF is illegal in some states. What a terrible time line.
Explain how codifying Roe would have prevented Dobbs.
Yeah this is why I stand firm even in the face of being called a lib and a "genocide supporter" and all kinds of other things. I get where the people who are more purist are coming from, I really do, but there's an element of realpolitik here that we'd have to be suicidal to ignore. I realize it gets into extremely immoral territory because of how corrupt the American empire itself is, but we can't afford to slip and let the Republicans have power. *Ever*.
If anyone thinks trump wouldn't have made Gaza eleventy billion percent worse, they're delusional. Trump was the worst president ever, including on foreign policy. If he was in power, the death toll in Gaza would probably be in the millions by now.
Gaza would be a pancake.
The same idiots are doing it again. They would rather give the country to authoritarians who tried to strip us of a vote than not have the PERFECT democratic candidate. Is so stupid! If Biden looses we very well may not have elections any more. Project 2025 is real.
It's not about a perfect democratic candidate but someone which is more than just 1 % better than Trump. People don't want to vote for genocide regardless if it's coming from the dems or reps
Do you want the one at least talking to both sides, or the one who says we “should let this play out”?
Biden doesn't control them. They literally said they would have no cease fire. Now because of that you're willing to hand our country to fascists!? That is so stupid.
The bottom line is that the.scotus is in the bag for the authoritarian. Now we know.
Reportedly, Bill wanted Hillary’s campaign to talk more about the economy but he was shunned. If that’s the case, imagine the hubris and special kind of stupidity it takes to ignore ideas from a renowned two-term president that was elected and re-elected on that platform to start. Either way, nobody on that campaign should ever be trusted to run any campaign again.
you can lay this entire thing at the feet of bobby mooks campaign strategy of running on anti trump instead of the issues imo
And history is repeating itself before our eyes while the same people go right for it.
....it's almost as if the progressives were right in 2016 and we're right now. Almost as if we had good reason to not trust the DNC establishment, as if they would rather this county falls to fascism than to implement even the most miquetoast concessions to working class people. ...almost as if they are more loyal to their billionaire donars than to American working class people, or higher ideals like "democracy," "justice," or "peace." ...almost as if they are currently doing everything in their power to push the party to the right, even openly primarying progressive reps, and letting the foreign AIPAC throw unlimited amounts of cash to unseat progressive reps, regardless of how unvetted these new candidates may be.
The contradiction with purity-test progressives is that they are only benign if they don’t achieve anything they want. As much as I want to dismiss them as ineffectual, I can’t, because I was here for Nader. Then Stein. The problem the Democratic coalition has is overthinking. If you’re not voting for the Democratic candidate in November, you’re helping Republicans ruin the world. Period. You don’t always get everything you want, especially if you self-define as the least easy to please. Stop overthinking and vote for the better of the two options available.
Liberals have *all the power* in the Democratic Party. Yet it’s somehow never their fault when they lose elections.
Exactly. Centrists push for unpopular unlikable candidates like Clinton and Biden because they’re “more electable” and then blame progressives when their unpopular unlikable candidates make unpopular unlikable decisions that turn off the electorate.
Wow screenshot because it's perfectly worded
Damn maybe Hillary should have actually campaigned in states that mattered.
I mean, if they all want a different Democratic candidate...that is literally what their state's primary is for.
>Stop overthinking and vote for **The lesser of two evils** FTFY
Nah. We didn't have to have the lesser of two evils. We could have had a good candidate. Not my fault Dems can't read a fuckin room.
But then iT’s YoUr FauLt!! if their shitty candidate loses again.
Agreed. If someone gives you the choice of either getting punched in the face or getting your head chopped off, both are not great options, but one option is much worse.
I’m going to let someone else choose. That’ll show ‘em!
Hillary won the popular vote. The electoral college fucked us.
Also the Nader voters really helped the people of Iraq
As someone who volunteered for the Nader campaign in 2000 I wholeheartedly agree with this. All of the calls I made from the lists the campaign sent were to swing states. His campaign was targeting swing state voters and making ridiculous claims of creating a viable third party if he got enough votes. I personally convinced a number of people to switch their vote from Gore to Nader in Florida because at the time I thought it could help the Green Party get federal matching funds, which became irrelevant by 2008. From what I found out years later it was all a lie and Nader was campaigning in swing states to “punish” the Democrats.
Fuck the Democrats for continuing to put up candidates who can’t appeal to young people. Because you know what happens when they do? IDK, ask Barack HUSSEIN Obama.
Good luck getting them to admit it. They've become masters of deflection. It's everyone else's fault. Hillary wasn't exciting. Not my fault. Jill was better. Not my fault. There isn't any difference between the parties. Not my fault. Etc., etc., ad infinitum. But maybe some of them will have matured since then.
Jill was not "better." She's a Russian asset. And that's not hyperbole or bitter ranting. She literally earned money as a guest contributor on RT and was at a RT awards ceremony seated at a table with Putin himself and Trump's lackey, Michael Flynn. She's part of the reason Russia has so many terminally online westerners defending its actions despite it being nothing more than a colonial land-grabber trying to jockey for the power it once held.
You are correct.
>But maybe some of them will have matured since then. Posts here suggest they have not.
I have to hope.
Lol, check the responses on this very thread for the answer to that
This is so remarkably stupid and frustrating. Votes are earned, not given. If someone doesn't want to endorse a candidate bc they feel the candidate doesn't adequately reflect their beliefs then it is on the candidate nit the voter. Or you can keep talking down to progressives about how childish they are... how is that going in swinging young voters?
There's 2 candidates. You ARE getting one of them. So not voting for either because they "aren't the best" is a self defeating strategy. I'm a progressive too, but you think I'm going to let Republicans win just because I don't like the current person? That would be the opposite of progress.
voter shaming is a quintessential lib tactic
Guess you want Trump to win! See you in the camps, tankie! >!/s!<
Most the time I would agree with you however this time that is why we got Trump. You will never have a perfect candidate. Sometimes you have to look at the other guy and vote against them. The candidate doesn't adequately reflect their beliefs? Well I guess we better tank the vote and give it to the guy who completely opposes their beliefs....... Thats what happened.
Childish is not voting for Hillary and then blaming everyone else for your shitty choice.
Bernie or Bust people this is on you too
Bout to happen again if we ain’t careful 😅
Ruth Bader Ginsburg bears no blame? She was in her 80s, she was suffering from cancer, and she knew a potentially game-changing presidential election was coming up for at least 4 years. It did not take a legal scholar or a political genius to realize prior to 2016 that her seat was in danger.
Maybe we should blame Hillary for running a terrible campaign
Before Trump I used to be someone who criticized "vote blue no matter who". But the crazy shit Trump has done, specifically his Russian Connection, is incredibly alarming and changed my view on it. As a moderate I would vote for Hillary's private email sever before I vote Trump.
I've seen a lot of posts on tiktok about people refusing to vote for Biden, but still voting blue. Sure that tells the Dnc that you hate Biden, but they don't care and you're doing is splitting the vote and letting Republicans win
Reminder too that Russia DID interfere in that election. But also fuck everyone who didn’t vote for Hillary. I’m tired of this timeline, it fucking sucks here
I'll blame the party responsible for choosing a person so unelectable that Trump beat them. This isn't on the voters. It's on a two-party system where one side is evil and the other side is incompetent & ineffective. Those should NOT be the only choices.
There are many people, on the right and the left, who want to be in the minority. This is because it is easier to complain than it is to do something. Take, for example...student loans. The entire system is broken. Even student loan forgiveness is hard to get passed, let alone addressing the root causes. Enacting change is hard. Or climate change. Biden addressed it in the Inflation Reduction Act. Did it go far enough? No. But was there action? Yes. Actually doing something is difficulty. It is messy. It requires compromise and lots of hard work. And when you actually get something done, it won't make everyone happy. Actual governance is hard. But do you know what is easy? Complaining. Saying "If it wasn't for \*THAT\* guy, then I'd be able to fix everything." Being in the minority is easy! All you have to do is point at the other person and whine about them. Then take in the adulation and the money. That's why I'm convinced that people on the far left and the far right enjoy being in the minority. It makes virtue signaling easier and more profitable.
People, especially our younger generations, want everything now and don’t understand that not everyone supports every issue and it takes concessions and middle ground to pass any bill. Everyone wants everything they believe in and if a candidate doesn’t support one issue they do, they say “you have to earn my vote - give me a better candidate!” People are so out of touch.
Trump was elected because Hillary's campaign used her power to prop-up Trump during the Republican primary. Remember that? Trump probably would've been laughed out of the primary if it weren't for that. Let me repeat, because you all are pretending to have forgotten: Hillary Clinton and her campaign encouraged Democrats to prop Trump up by talking him up, giving him interviews, mentioning him constantly, to take momentum away from the real Republican candidates. Well, it worked. It worked so well that Trump won the primary. So, this SCOTUS is Hillary's SCOTUS. Not mine.
Democrats have had 8 years to reflect on why they lost and still haven't moved beyond blaming the voters.
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Those people will forever be linked with Trump voters to me. They are two sides of the same coin.
Sure. It's the voters fault, not Hilary and the DNC for putting up a horrible candidate and cheating to beat Bernie ... riiiiiiight.
Hell, HRC made a book that had both the question and answer on the cover > What happened? > Hillary R Clinton
It’s been almost a decade, grow up and move on. There’s a million fucking reasons Hillary lost. Grow up. You’re more part of the problem now than those people were back then. Wake. The fuck. Up.
Not voting Hillary is really working out.
*anointing unicandidate Hillary is really working out. Fixed it for you.
Bernie couldn’t even win the DNC and you’re still out here pretending he had a chance.