this post was submitted on 06 Feb 2025

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it's good to look in the mirror and understand the material outcomes of voter behavior (lemmy.cafe)

submitted 22 hours ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I have problems with people who abstained. The hard thing is, how do you change voter behavior?

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (2 children)

Okay I'm getting sick of the whole "the dems failed us" bullshit.

WE failed. WE let this happen. WE had the choice between an obvious dictator or continued democracy.

You can shift the blame all you want but at the end of the day it was an obvious choice. You can come up with any other excuse you want. If you didn't vote for Harris you are to blame. Period. End of fucking story.

Edit: The dems should've been able to run a wet paper bag against Trump and win. The fuck is wrong with people to not see that?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 36 minutes ago* (last edited 34 minutes ago) (1 children)

While I can understand your perspective, it's one of those unfortunate cases where ideology clashes with reality.

Yes, Trump never planned on following through on actually helping people. He lied, and people bought it. And yet it's no ones fault Harris's that she decided to tell people "things won't change if you vote for me".

A nation of voters isn't made up of individuals who you can convince, it's a crowd of people following certain dynamics, just like any other large grouping of things. You can either accept that and work with this fact to steer the crowd, or you can ignore this fact and lose because you're trying to go against the flow. And in the end, the only people who had any meaningful control was Harris' campaign.

Imagine you're a shepherd, and your flock is running towards the edge of a cliff. Sure, you can plant your feet and say "they shouldn't run off the cliff", but the only end result will be losing all your sheep.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 18 minutes ago (2 children)

I respect your argument, but I still refute it.

There was a saying someone shared recently: Give them the third best option. Because the second best comes too late and the best never comes at all. Essentially, do not let perfect be the enemy of the good.

I agree that Kamala should have developed more of a campaign around frustrated white young men, and working class America. That was a mistake, but I also think it was an easy mistake to make when scrambling to take over from Biden’s campaign.

If we go 4 years from now, 8 years, 30 years, I think every candidate we see will be imperfect and will make mistakes. The only time we’ll ever see a perfect candidate is when they lie about their accomplishments and overstate themselves. Americans need to be able to spot those flaws themselves, and that will not change in any election cycle. I should not get into the White House by promising every working American a trillion dollars.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 minutes ago

Did you forget noone chose kamala? Twice in a row the democrats have taken popular choice away to put in their best corporate sponsor. We have had better choices every time and the democrats say fuck you anyways.

She didnt scramble to take over the campaign, she killed it out of the gate before moneyed hands got ahold of her and restricted what she could say and how. She showed us a good campaign and then threw it away. You remember that too right?

Nobody is looking for a perfect candidate, just one that actually wants to help the american people instead of use the government as a global pyramid scheme.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 minutes ago

I'm not asking for a perfect candidate, not sure where you got that from.

My whole point is that Harris' positions got her some number of voters. We now know that this number was too small, and we also now know that they knew this fact.

Harris could have changed her positions to get more voters, but she didn't. How is this not completely her fault?

Again, I'm not asking her to be some perfect politician. I'm asking her to look at the polling results (which we know she had) and to adapt her campaign based on those, which she didn't do.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 49 minutes ago

I share your sentiment. If you had any sort of idea, even the faintest inkling of trump, literally a corpse should have been elected, I think many of the electorate don't know anything about their politicians, and just vote a certain way "cause that's how we've always done it". The last election, elected a dictatorial fascist, and the alternative was to pinch your nose and apply pressure for Kamala to go left.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 51 minutes ago

Based on the top level comments here - yeah, they still think that Harris is exactly the same as Trump, and have zero regrets.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

The genocide(and poor national level performance) was the last straw for many people who have been lifelong democrat voters. After 30+ years of seeing dems bring ferocity and strategy and boldness to primaries only to sit in office, renege and fail on many of those promises even in times when they have a supermajority. Then to see only a few dems actually screaming on the floors of congress. As well biden refusing to use the bully pulpit.

I don't believe any of them wanted this outcome. I do believe they felt their vote was only going to promote a regime that would continue the trend of genocide and protecting wall street over the needs of desparate citizens. Billions to kill and profit then pennies to the people.

I believe the fault lies entirely on the DNC and not the voters who saw no benefit in promoting the party over the other.

It's wrong, a dem in power is worlds better, but i understand seeing it as pointless in the moment. There is no good answer, only a less wrong one...

To answer the question, pass useful legislation and don't promote genocide. Legislation like universal healthcare, constitutional abortion(and other women's healthcare), raising minimum wage, universal pre-k, Union support, decriminalize drugs(esp. Weed), and to reverse inflation to name only just a tiny few..

TLDR: 30yrs of "lesser of two evils" kills voter motivation. Blame the party not the people.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

This was NOT the time to do this. This election was about the end of fucking democracy in the face of fascism and these abstainers wanted to pull teenage shit and fucking ended the country as we know it.

Now Gaza is getting wiped out because these abstainers couldn't abstract what a p2025 theocracy was going to do?

People were screaming about this for months. THIS election was an existential fight right now at home, and they chose to pull idealist teenage shit.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 26 minutes ago

I mean, I place more of the blame for "ending the country" on the fascists and the people who enthusiastically put them into power, but if you want to blame the handful of people who abstained then you do you I guess

[–] [email protected] 19 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (7 children)

"We offered nothing and lost to a liar who said they would get something if he came back into office. Why did we lose?"

"We said everything was going great when the public was facing hardships and being targeted by systemic and economic inequality, and the dude lied and said he'd solve it. Why did we lose?"

"The last guy was unpopular and didn't push back on Trump to get him jail. And then we said we'd do nothing different as Americans are facing homeless and their bodily autonomy being ripped away from them. How did we lose?"

"We courted Republicans who openly hate our voter base, alienated them by saying we don't need you, and Republicans are too brainwashed to vote for anyone but Republicans. Why did we lose?"

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 hours ago

"We let the campaign be run by the same people who already lost against Trump in 2016. Why did we lose?"

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

Clearly, the dems need to be lying more.

No, I'm serious, they need to actually start hitting back in kind if they want to preserve even a sliver of the country. This moral high road shit sounds great but boy, does not seem to work in practice.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

I will never look down on someone who voted or refused to vote because of thier conscience. Obviously for this specific question, that excludes people claiming to care about gaza, but still voting for trump. There was no illusion that trump was going to do anything positive for gaza.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

I will never look down on someone who voted or refused to vote because of thier conscience.

You should. They only bring about worse situations at best. Pretending to be moral when what you're doing is the opposite is pure hypocrisy.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Remember, the most constructive thing you can do is get mad at other, equally powerless people like yourself! This is how political change happens.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (2 children)

Remember! People aren't powerless! Voting is a power! Not voting is not how political change happens

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 hours ago

that's a good point

I wonder what would happen if the Democrats tried to activate those chronic non-voters, rather than trying to flip those moderate republicans i keep being told are real

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 hours ago

Muslim Groups Who Pushed Against Kamala Harris Respond to Trump's Gaza Plan - Newsweek

[–] [email protected] 19 points 10 hours ago (8 children)

Democrats then: "We'll win without appealing to Arabs in Michigan or anyone who demands we stop funding Israel. Shut them out of the DNC and scold them at every turn. Who cares how they react or that they're forming PACs like 'Arabs for Trump.' We don't need their votes."

Democrats now: "We lost because you STUPID Palestine-lovers wouldn't vote for us. Your country needed your votes, Gaza needed your votes. It's actually your fault that we didn't bother appealing to you."

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

To the DNC and right wing Dems, its always someone else's fault why their candidate failed to appeal to the voters they are trying to represent. No accountability for their failure.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 56 minutes ago

Never taking responsibility and always blaming others for your failures is basically baked into conservative DNA

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

"We don't need you! We never needed you! Every one of you is a paid Russian actor! We will win with Chaney and Romney!"

"GOD PLEASE WE NEEDED YOU! WHY DIDN'T YOU TRUST US?! WE CHASED AFTER THE REPUBLICANS TO MAKE YOU LOVE US!"

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

The more I think about it, the more this sort of gaslighting reminds me of Eve Online shenanigans. Which is fair, after all, users like Jibrish moderate r/eve like they do r/conservative.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

i hate the big d Democratic party. i dont like their platform, i don't like their candidates. i voted for harris in2024. the time to make political statements and form a movement is now. do you know what you are supposed to do during election season? VOTE!

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 12 hours ago

The democrats tried everything except for actually grappling with the subject. Now blaming the voters completely misses the point .. that the dems where supporting Israel and clearly stated they would continue the current path. Trump had the decency to lie to the constituents. And now they cope by convincing themselves it's part of his plan. The voters where duped.. but the Dems did this.. not the voters.

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