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Punish the Democrats, she says
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this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2026
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I remember arguing for days, in 2024, that the whole "Democrats are bad because Palestine" thing was clearly a psyop by Russian bots trying to mess with the election. I really need to improve my persuasion skills. Like by a lot.
Pretty sure Democrats doing nothing to stop the genocide in gaza was a factor to their detriment in the election, bots aside
Even knowing that Trump was going to actively help Bibi? That's the thing I didn't understand: sure, the Democrats were not doing much to stop the slaughter, but from the previous Trump administration we knew Trump was going to actively help.
Ok, but you see how massively demoralizing this conversation is, right?
Making logical points weighing up two distinct yet similar stances on genocide is only going to suppress voter turnout.
It shouldn't. It's basic harm reduction.
One side probably won't stop it, but they're on our side so there's a sliver of a cintilla of a chance we could pressure them into it.
The other side absolutely would not, vocally stated he would help accelerate it, and would laugh in our faces and do even more to accelerate it for no other reason than it made us mad.
The choice should have been obvious, even if I and everyone else would have preferred better options.
See people aren't exclusively machines.
I know people who felt that both sides at least tacitly supporting the genocide was so depressing that for their mental health they basically checked out of politics.
No, that response isn't helpful, but it's a very real thing that happens to real people. They needed a candidate that cared that people's lives were ending across the sea, and neither side offered that.
That hurt Kamala's chances in a very real way, and might even be the deciding factor for Trump's second term.
While you and I can look at this and go "Wow, that's not logical, she's way better than Trump", the Democratic campaign should have had political scientists and psychologists that knew about this well-documented phenomenon. I imagine they did, and ignored it, because siding against Israel would've cost money.
So while it's true that the choice was still objectively obvious, it's also completely true that the Democratic campaign absolutely mishandled it, because this isn't some new phenomenon, and group human psychology isn't unpredictable. It's also not the fault of those who didn't vote because of that.
D and R parties both need independent voters to win any election. For example, even if every D voted for a D, they would lose without independents voting for them in significant numbers. This has been a political fact for many years.
So... why did the Harris campaign target REPUBLICAN voters (instead of Ds and independents)? They wasted a lot of vital time on that ("He doesn't need to know who you voted for" etc), and they knew that they would lose if they did so.
She knew it too, Harris isn't stupid. She took a knee.
yep, and the Dem leadership still support israel no matter what they do. They learned nothing and will try to set up the same voter hostage situation in every vote from now on.
If every election is a decision between the lesser of two evils and both evils become more evil over time then harm isn't actually reduced in the long run. This is why harm reduction is a failing long term electoral strategy.
We don't live in a world of "should", in the real world of course it is demoralizing and affects the vote turnout.
We all know the US government will back Israel no matter what... and the voters can only punish the incumbent party for doing so.
65% of Democrats don't want to finance Israel. Two thirds of their own party, that's massive!
Voter turnout will continue to fall; D and R parties will continue to lose voters (now down to 30% registered voters each) and the Independents will continue to grow (now up to 40% of voters).
Why? Because our major parties ignore what their constituents actually want, and we can only punish one party every term.
It shouldn't be that way, but it is.
The same people in this thread blaming voters for how Kamala Harris ran their campaign were the same ones insisting we had to run Biden as the incumbent, and calling you a bit or a school if you said they needed to be replaced.
We wouldn't have this outcome if the people who've made it their entire identity to blame voters had placed their frustrations with the party and demanded better, sooner, when it could have made a material difference.
Nonsense.
Absolute nonsense, and the Palestinian Americans who voted 'undetermined' en masse during the Democratic primaries to send a message to Biden/Harris knew it too. The party made their choice between the people and an unpopular genocide. They chose genocide.
The very fact that the Trolley Problem exists as a thought experiment and there is still active discourse over the correct solution should tell you why people didn't all feel that they had a responsibility to vote for harm reduction. You can't expect an election that resembles a famously divisive philosophical thought experiment to turn out with everyone arriving at the same conclusion, and it's pointless to dwell on the fact that everyone didn't fall in line with what you think is obvious rather than adjusting to the reality and acting accordingly. That means getting candidates elected in primaries that aren't going to put us in the same trolley problem come time for the general.
Perhaps. But that's not the world we live in. Demanding an electorate to suddenly change in a way it never has and start behaving like Homo economicus is only going to lead to further loses.
What is more the "Democrat are bad because Palestine" was the opposition's framing. The argumeny was pretty unanimous that the policy on Palestine was going to cost the Democrats the election. The Democrats were bad because they knew full well they were going to choose to lose over changing that policy.
And that's just tunnel visioning at only the Israeli policy.
Yeah, the choice was bad or worse, and people chose worse. Life sucks sometimes, they need to grow up.
I don't want to cut off this gangrene foot because it will be unpleasant. Let's just wait it out and see what what happens.
This was never a difficult decision and the ones that thought it was are fundamentally simple people.
Yes, I can see that it would be demoralizing, and it was demoralizing. The Schumer/Biden wing of the Democrats deserves to be cast into the bonfire of the vanities, they are completely useless. And while this might sound sarcastic, I truly believe they have ended their usefulness, if they ever had much.
But we are talking about human beings and their lives. It may not make much of a philosophical difference to compare different stances on this senseless slaughter, but it makes eminently practical sense to save the lives you can. An American Presidential election was not going to produce much of a genocide-stopping president in 2024, and I hope 2028 does better, but there were distinct differences in approach and stance and collaboration with Bibi.
Case in point, look up "Gaza floating pier," vs. "Trump Gaza resort." it's not about philosophical differences when you are starving.
The Gaza floating pier was used to do warcrimes, then dismantled.
Not doing much to stop it is a weird way of saying actively helping it.
I see you too are actively helping it then. It's your own words!
Yeah buddy I wasn't saying not actively working against it was helping it. I meant literally helping it. That Administration was actively arming the Israelis and aiding in the genocide. Super weird that you didn't know that.
The US was doing it anyway before Trump2.0
What would you call Genocide Joe keeping the WMD shipments flowing, on time, without end, even during a manufactured famine?
This is one issue where both parties are literally the same.
They were selling weapons to enable the genocide you're downplaying by refusing to call it a genocide.
Doing nothing to stop it, cheering on Universities and police that beat and punished protesters, refusing to let Ruwa Romman or anyone else anti-genocide speak at their convention, etc.
Their policy was bad and they were assholes about it at every opportunity. It's honestly amazing she got as many votes as she did.
I mean, the democrats ARE bad because Palestine. But the Republicans are worse, by A LOT.
If more people could know more than one thing can be true like you do, we'd probably have the energy crisis solved and relative peace globally...
Is there any possible way to disagree with you that you won't read as a Russian bot trying to undermine democracy?
It's such a thought-terminating cliche that anyone can use to dismiss any criticism. I could just as easily say that you're a DNC bot. Like, fuck critical thinking, I guess.
Or maybe we should demand politicians who aren't genocidal? I'm not a Russian bot, I just refuse to follow the same bullshit "vote blue no matter who" harm reduction narrative that just leads to infinitely more harm in the long run.
The car is already skidding on the ice. Saying "we should have taken the subway" is not useful at that point in time.
We'll still be skidding in 2028, and 2032, and 2036, and 2040, and so on. Picture yourself in 2044 making this same argument. Now we're arguing about Hitler (D) who wants to put trans people in prison, and Hitler (R) who wants to put trans people in death camps. Both candidates are willing to launch a nuclear weapon in behalf of Israel. The car is already skidding, it's too late to change things. If you don't vote for Hitler (D), then you're letting Hitler (R) win.
Flash back to 2026. "Vote blue no matter who" just means democrats don't have to appeal to leftists at all. In order to win, they just need to appeal to the right. Let's force them to appeal to the left instead.
"Don't vote until they learn how important we are" is how you join the third+ of the country that doesn't vote and is therefore ignored by politicians.
I can’t fathom how any of those people thought Trump would consider Palestine anything but a future golf course. It’s been annihilated as a country and a people under Trump.
Most of the genocide and leveling of Gaza happened under Biden. But yes it continued under trump. Israel owns both US political parties.
So I dont know why you say "under Trump" -- its the exact same thing under both Trump and Biden. We let Israel do whatever they want, whenever they want, however they want, to whoever they want, funded by us.
Seems you want to pretend Dems are better about it but I dont see how you can contrive any difference between 100% enablement and support.
I was fighting that battle right there alongside you, but yes the astroturfing was enormous. Sometimes I felt like I was the only sane person out there.
It helps to remember that there were hundreds of millions, potentially billions, of dollars going specifically to shilling for trump and putin and disparaging the democrats.
I tagged loads of accounts at the time, thinking they were just bots or plants, but a couple are still around and now I think maybe they're just well-meaning morons who couldn't quite figure out the implications...
The amount of that shit that was going on even here showed it worked. Pretty much all of those accounts are silent now. Shows you how the russian bots poisoned the election.
Or maybe I just don’t like genocide.
Liberals:
"People who oppose genocide can't possibly be human: they must be foreigners"
You guys I just as fascist as MAGA you know
Liberals: I can fix that voter, I just need to find the right logic combo in my persuasion.
Also Liberals: if voters were rational they would vote for the lesser evil.
Keep lecturing people, I am sure it will work this time around.
By "Palestine" do you mean "supporting genocide in Palestine"?