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this post was submitted on 06 Nov 2024
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Leopards Ate My Face
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Honest question: Why blame the voters? Why not blame Harris for refusing to do the obviously correct, ethical even moral thing regarding Gaza?
The democrats are so impossibly spineless that they wait for polls and focus groups for their talking points instead of standing up for their principles (if they really exist).
Dems spent the entire campaign trying to compromise with and convince right wingers acting in bad faith instead of just working towards progressive policies. They once and again let the GOP set the tone for every conversation.
The Dem's attitude towards the genocide in Gaza is just a piece of evidence that shows their way of thinking: the dog race and politicking is more important that doing the right thing.
So stop blaming the voters and take a deep look into your own values and principles because the nation being obliterated right now in the middle east and the people who stand for them even at great cost to themselves are definitely not to blame.
Cause they voted. Or didn't. Ultimately the choice is with them and a large majority of people decided that they'll vote for rapist, racist, authoritarian fuckwit or sit the fuck home because it doesn't matter who is running the government.
You can talk strategies and blame Democratic party till cows come home but at the end of the day, the people have to choose the least bad option.
And if they weren't willing to choose the least bad option, I think that says more about the least bad option than it does about the worst option.
No
So, her failing to be more popular than fascism is the fault of the voting base... Makes sense.
Tell me again how you fail to clear that bar, and how that's the voters fault?
Yes. The voters preferring fascism over liberalism is the voters' fault. If the voters weren't fascists and fascist apologists, Kamala would have won.
Today 71 million fascists, 66 million leftists, and 107 million fascism-apologists decided on the POTUS.
In Nazi Germany, the Jewish survivors had a word for people who didn't vote against Hitler: Nazis.
First of all, Drag, I voted for Harris, and actually voted Democrat down ballot. So from this trans veterans lips to your ear canals: Drag can go fuck Dragself for calling me a Nazi for having the audacity to criticize the party I'm forced to vote for that doesn't represent any of my interests.
And that right fucking there is why Democrats lose, and Democrats are to blame: they can't do anything but give us a candidate to vote against, and not one to vote for.
How many voters do you think they would have pulled running on an actual, progressive platform instead of the status quo bullshit we're all clearly tired of? Medicare4All, free tuition, free school meals, actually funding social welfare programs, actually enshrining LGBTQ+ and bodily autonomy rights into law, expanding the supreme court to actually reflect the country's wishes, abolishing the filibuster so progress can potentially start again in the Senate, stopping weapons shipments for the Palestinian genocide (or ffs, even taking a stance on the genocide)?
The Democrats lost, and fascism won, because the Democrats refuse to listen to their base. Dem voters stayed home because their party leadership failed to inspire them, and I'm sick of the people asking for policies that will actually benefit them instead of some billionaire oligarchs (where's the blame pointed at the millions they funneled into the elections) being blamed for everything. This isn't even considering the four years Biden had to show the American people any progress, any discernible improvement in their economic lives, and failed to do so.
Just like in 2016: the DNC forced a candidate onto the party they didn't want, refused to listen to any vocal portions of the party while condescendingly telling them that party leaders know best and they need to fall in line, campaigned on uninspiring centrist policies and a return to the status quo, keep preaching about working across the aisle while being slandered and shit on, and then assume the race is in the bag because the other candidate is a fascist reality star.
And just like in 2016, they lost, and they have no one to blame but themselves.
Because I never saw Trump getting the exact same criticism. Not even when he told Netanyahu, "finish the job."
Somehow Harris was always worse on Gaza to certain people.
This post is a really good example of how the disinformation campaign actually worked on people and created this believe. Fascinating. And terrifying.
Or maybe, like they normally do, the Democrats failed to rally their base to vote, or didn't give them enough incentive to get out and vote.
Biden had 4 years to make meaningful progress for the American people, and whether or not he did is irrelevant because Americans don't feel better off than 4 years ago. Democrats spent the last year screaming about the economy doing amazing, while ignoring all of the polls showing Americans don't feel that way.
Democrats spent the last year sending weapons shipment after weapons shipment to Israel to bomb Palestinian children, despite polls showing the majority of Americans wanted contingencies on the shipments. And the Democrats instead lectured their constituents about how what they're seeing and hearing isn't actually what it is, and it'll be worse with the other guy!
Democrats spent the last 4 years doing nothing but try to return to the same status quo that isn't working for the average American anymore. Biden's hubris took the decision out of the people's hands, and we were given a candidate we didn't choose and told to shut up and like it because "fAsCiSm."
Well, congratulations Democrat Party, we fell to fascism because that's obviously a better alternative than actually putting forward progressive policies. And whether you like to hear it or not, the Republican voter supporting this fascist movement is doing so because they want change in this country too.
Only difference being, the Republicans are actually "progressing" their party along like their constituents want. Maybe the Democrats should try listening to their constituents for once and, idk, see if that maybe works in their favor for once?
No, the base let themselves very much get rallied.
They had a candidate that said "I'm not going to stop the genocide in Gaza" and one that went "I am fully pro-genocide in Gaza, and I want to burn it all down". And they all rallied behind the second one. This does tell me, as someone not from the US, one thing: A lot of voters in the US really dislike people from Gaza and want them to die. Fuck you people. Yes, I blame you voters. Fuck you.
No, the Democrats let their base get rallied by the Republicans, I don't blame the voters at all.
And you're acting like people voted for Trump instead of Kamala, when it seems more like a lot of people who would have voted Kamala stayed home. And that's thanks to the Democrats running a centrist platform that didn't inspire anyone, Biden being a centrist Status-Quo democrat for four years, ignoring the Palestinian Protest Votes during the primaries, refusing to let any Palestinians speak at the DNC but allowing numerous Republicans to, while their best piece of policy to the average American was, "Hey, we're not Trump."
I voted Harris, btw, but not because I liked her particularly much, and I think that's a big part of it. Democrats don't listen to their constituents, so their constituents stay home due to apathy. That's on the DNC, not the voters.
That's the exact same thing in a first-past-the-post voting system, sorry. I mean granted, if you wanted to support Trump anyways, you saved yourself the walk. Congrats. But that's the only difference, you supported Trump either way.
And again it comes down to a singular issue? Again, that's why I blame the voters: If people so readily toss their intellect aside and become single-issue voters, feeding directly into this us-vs-them polemic that is so prevalent in the far right and the US in general, then they really ought to at least not blame anybody but themselves. It's easy to ignore a lot of good news if you hyperfocus on a single bad thing and just put your fingers into your ears.
More so if you actually vote to make that single issue you care about worse. But hey, I'm not an american, apparently the majority wants to Genocide Turbo Edition in Gaza.
And again, this makes no sense. Hence me blaming voters for their own failings. It's like with the Brexit, although there at least there was the added thing that nobody expected the vote could ever come out as yes, so most just did not bother to go vote, felt unnecessary. Here, they very much knew that if they don't go to vote they're effectively voting for the orange potato fascist. And they still did it. So they're trump voters now. Stamped and classified. And I blame trump voters.
(edit)
I'll go a step further: You are a voter ought to actively not want elections to be about marketing. Rather, you should be tracking whether the past electorate has actually improved things.
So, under Biden:
I mean, how many positive news do people really need? At what point is it okay if I blame the idiotic voters who actively choose to ignore it and listen to the right-wing media feeding them rage bait?
Hey friend, guess what didn't win you the election? Your voting strategy under fptp voting.
It only works if people like you. We don't like you. Cheers. You brought this onto yourself just like the DNC.
i like how depending on what day it is if i am voting harris i support genocide but if i dont support harris i also support genocide.
What belief, may I ask?
Look, you can check my older comments to understand where I'm coming from. I'm open to listening and perhaps we both can learn something from all of this.
The belief that everyone decrying Harris' stance on Gaza was knowingly or unknowingly participating in enabling a worse stance on Gaza than the still-not-great one we would have gotten with her.
Look back now with hindsight and tell me what would be better for Palestinians in Gaza. What we're getting with trump in charge? Or what we might have gotten if every single person who said negative things about Harris' stance had instead focused solely on how Trump's stance was objectively worse per his own words.
By not putting the focus on the absolutely 100% guaranteed WORSE stance of the two, people enabled talking points that led, in part, to where we are now.
THAT is why so many of us screaming about harm reduction and the lesser of two evils is SO pissed off about single-issue Gaza voters not putting in for Harris.
Stop letting perfect be the enemy of good. It leads to this.
Elections are about holding your nose and making the best of a bunch of imperfect choices.
Trying to make it anything else from the top down is folly. You have to start from the bottom up. Until that happens, we will never see our way out of a two party system.
You're still blind you've learned nothing. Enjoy your fascism. Its not your fault people didnt vote for harris. Its their fault for not understanding how the system works. 😂 You're hopeless. Harris lost not because of the genocide, its just an example, she lost because she didn't give voters a reason to show up for her.
Arabs? Israel has a right to murder your family. Young people? Sit down im speaking. Labors? Heres 50k for you to start a business. Wat? I need to afford eggs. Abortion? Oh wait thats protected already is most of the states in play.
Can you try to put that into words? Like, give me concrete examples of how Trump is worse for Gaza.
A weapon doesn't kill or hurt less people just because the dealer who sold/gave it away said, "Genocide is bad, okay?"
Those bombs are gonna kill and hurt people no matter if it's the Dems or the Reps sending them to Israel. There are lots of reasons why Trump is worse, but if you're a Palestinian it really doesn't make a difference if the weapon that kills you came from a racist man or a woman who condemns genocide.
Edit:
So many downvotes, so many disagreeing comments, but not a single fucking person has managed to give one concrete example that explains why weapons coming from Trump is so much worse than weapons coming from Kamala, for Palestinians.
Edit 2:
Here's an article detailing the destruction in Gaza in December 2023, 11 months ago. I feel like some of you need reminding of the current reality, when you can't even come up with concrete hypotheticals.
Because there's no effing way Netanyahu would have posted anything like this in response to a Kamala win.
ThAts NoT cOncReTe
This asshole is nothing but a fucking piece of shit sealion
I asked for something concrete that Trump would do that is worse for Palestine. You still haven't explained how a bomb from the Republicans hurts more than a bomb from the Democrats.
Again, there's lots of reasons Trump is worse than Kamala, but weapons will kill people no matter who uses them.
He literally said they should "finish the job" but we all know you're lying and know he said that. I'm thankful for the user tagging feature in boost. I never have to give you benefit of doubt again, wasting my time reading the words of a liar.
Because you fall into the same "but what about?!"-thing modern far right excels at.
You myopically focus on a single issue, trying desperately to use it as a crowbar to dislodge an otherwise sensible point, ignoring that everything is inherently a compromise, in particular in a 2-party system. Hence any voter who is not as easily blinded - and it's not like Harris wasn't very open during speeches about how much the right deals in fearmongering and disinformation, going as far as openly mocking people for made-up bullshit stats they're yelling - would be able to inform themselves and realize that:
So, even if we were to just focus on this particular issue, the voters very much vote pro-genocide when they vote for Trump. I love how he's technically correct though when he says he wants to end the war in Gaza, people are just too stupid to realize how he means it.
But more importantly, and the central point I'm making, you're under the belief that reaction to a single issue should matter. Any voter who lets this argument slide has inherently lost themselves to the populist and fascist movements as they excel at exploiting this, and in fact stoke this belief whenever they can. Politics on a large scale cannot be judged based on single issues. Because if you try to, you exactly fall into this trap. You automatically end up being barraged by appeals to emotion, constantly, and you'll let those decide things for you.
Hence, blaming the voters. For not actually engaging with the democratic process, just with hate- and fearmongering and then wondering why that that ended up controlling them when they sought it out themselves.
Learn something from this...?
To what end? For what point? There isn't an "undo" button on fascism.
It's funny how common this sentiment is though. My dad started voting for the AfD citing similar words. The very same people do not even notice how this trains them in 3-4 steps to be a voter for a fascist party themselves, it's why it is so genius/scary. They still think they're doing the right thing, even when actively supporting what breaks their own ability of doing anything to begin with.
Really goes to show how strong a strictly-controlled corporate mass media with an inherent corporate agenda can be. Billionaires enjoy fascist or ultra-right control as it keeps them out of any external checks and balances. And with their influence on media by owning said media, they get to highlight individual issues and hype them up to be as dealbreaking as they want them to be, while burying a long list of individual good things that happens so that people never get into a positive attitude.
There was this fascinating summary a while ago how much the german SPD did to improve the situations specifically for those groups of people who the AfD bemoaned as being "forgotten about" in one of their polemics. And it was curious to see how little you hear about this simply because being a lot of individually small improvements over a certain number of years, there's nothing big that has to be reported, and giant right-wing media conglomerates can hence easily bury the good news and focus on individual aggro issues instead.
People are also different nowadays because back a few generations ago when things went to shit, people pulled together and dropped their differences. Nowadays when things globally turn bad and hard times come up, everyone segregates and starts blaming everybody else instantly, which again just makes them very vulnerable to fascism.
Because like it or not stopping aid for Israel would have pushed all Israel supporters to Trump. Sadly apparently most Palestine supporters are stupid enough to not see that is 1000x worse for them
I don't think this is a constructive way of looking at the situation. After all, being quiet about Netanyahu's abuses wasn't a winning strategy either. Besides, being scared of Israeli lobbying automatically makes you a bad leader.
Regular people don't live reading obscure threads on Lemmy so I'm 100% sure that the effects of the comments posted by tankies here are negligible.
My point is that you can't lose against the worst human being twice and keep blaming the electorate. If they want to lead, the dems have to stand for something instead of complaining about turnout or in general blaming anyone else but themselves. It was THEIR job to get out the vote.
Trump is a monumental POS but the dems prefer to cater to the people who voted for him instead of the people who want legitimate pro-working-class policies.
You can blame dems for a lot but to decide not to vote for them because of Gaza is the dumbest possible take
Who is likely to lose? Oh right harris.
Yo! Wisconsin whats up today? How your friends and family in the middle east doing?
Hey Harris have any of that worker love? Protection of american jobs? No? 🥴.
Yo Pennsylvania whats up?
But yes its the voters who are wrong.... Who was it that said 'only winning matters'? Oh right pelosi... Smart. Evil. Lady.
Yes, Democracy lost. Whats your point?
That you've still learned nothing from this experience. The thing we were telling you for the last month.
Harris' needed to give people a reason to vote for her. In Wisconsin that was stopping the genocide. In Pennsylvania thats fucking reducing the cost of living, inproving wages, etc.
If we're lucky enough to get out of this with our country in tact next time stfu up about lesser evil and demand your candidate have policies that benefit people.
In short dont be like 'sit down im speaking' harris, the lesser evil. And instead be more like 'yes sir stand up trll me what you need!'
You didnt tell me anything. I criticized Harris from the day she was made candidate. I am luckily not american and dont live there though
If the electorate votes for the worst human being twice they definitely deserve a freaking hulking heap of blame.
They didnt show up fam. We warned you. We told you harris wasnt doing enough. But you insisted that they were at fault if they didnt vote. Well guess what. They didnt vote. And now you're stuck with the consequences. Thanks i guess.
The simple answer is you blame people for the things they do. Kind of fucking basic.
Yeah harris should have ran a better campaign with less genocide and more pro labor policies.
I think you are overshooting how much average American citizens think about or even give a shit about Gaza.
Because it's only one issue out of many that need to be addressed (I didn't say fixed because IMHO the IDF are doing pretty good work eradicating Hamas, all things considered).
You guys need to take care of your housing, healthcare, gerrymandering, public transport, student loans, separation of religion and government and a truckload of other things that I don't think Trump has any interest in improving. And you can bet your bottom dollar that Trump won't be any "better" in regards to the situation in Gaza and the rest of the middle east.
So the voters that didn't vote Harris purely because of the Gaza issue are to blame for their short sightedness.
Okay so blame the arabs in Wisconsin. Got it. Now do Pennsylvania. Why did they go trump. Tell me more mr oracle.
In general I agree, because their campaign definitely could've been better and it should've been better. But on the other hand this election wasn't genocide or no genocide, without a significant shift in either political party that would happen regardless. If you really wanted to twist it into "genocide or no genocide" then that vote was "completely support genocide" or "begrudgingly support genocide".
But really this election was between "full steam straight into fascism" and "chance to not go into fascism". It's obvious that if you don't vote for the latter you either want fascism or don't care that you're getting fascism. That is on the voters. They could've voted to pass the fascism buck to the next election, but they didn't. Now America is getting fascism.
They literally voted for it. You can't say don't blame the people who chose it. Blame both.
This had nothing to do with Gaza. This election shows Gaza doesn't matter one iota. Ukraine didn't matter one bit. Not even your own human rights mattered. This was inflation, housing, and (further on the right) xenophobia. Clinton was right, "it's the economy stupid" (even though Dems are better for the economy).
You are right. We can't keep blaming other citizens like ourselves.
There is one group of people that led us to this point: Democrats themselves. And by Democrats, I mean those in power, delegates, podcast hosts, and the ones supposedly "leading" the party. Not the electorate.
They are the ones that wished Biden would be able to make it to a second term, when the first presidential debate clearly showed otherwise. They are the ones that pushed un-Democratic policies in hopes of winning over a base they've never captured: Republicans. They are the ones that dropped the ball on one of the greatest feats of Kamala's campaign that could have sent her over the finish line: Tim Walz and a progressive agenda.