I remember hearing interviews with people in 2010 who supported Obama but voted for Republicans to send a message that Obama needed to get more shit done. You can ask why but the reasons aren't necessarily smart or rational.
The most banal explanation is... that most people aren't actually dedicated to anything, and thus democracy is going to inherently careen between one bad decision and another as people figure out that last decision was bad.
What people want is stuff to be better without there being anything they have to do or change, and they... mostly prefer folks who will tell them that this is not only *possible* (it isn't), but that it's *easy* and the only reason why they don't have it already is... Those Guys.
I think those ~30% of people are not inherently evil. They are focused on the cohesion in-group only, but out-group might as well not be animals to them. I believe these can be managed if you make it *very* clear that tolerance is a value of the in-group, and intolerant individuals are ostracised.
I think it is important to note that you are stripping the context out of this. The millions of people being called stupid and evil in this conversation are not Trump voters. They are people who could not countenance voting for someone who supports a genocide.
Also, such people *do not number in the millions*. This is an exaggeration by liberals who want to blame leftists and by leftists who want to blame the Democratic Party. The millions who didn't vote for Harris were simply not progressively-minded overall.
And there lies the issue. If the pro-Palestine and progressive voters were a big enough group to swing the election, the campaign was stupid to ignore them. If they weren't significant enough to warrant listening to, they can't be to blame for the loss.
Basically yes, although I still think it was extremely stupid when anyone anywhere promulgated overt anti-voting rhetoric.
And while I think Harris could have done better (and Biden *massively* better), it's still a tightrope: there are tons of loseable pro-Israel (stupid/evil) D voters out there.
Sad to see the origin of this; I was also sad when the milkshake duck Kiwi cartoonist was calling his fans Nazi scum for disagreeing that the US president personally commands the IDF. Being funny on the Internet can be a curse, I guess
Taking this seriously: roughly a third of people eligible to vote didn’t in 2024. About a third voted D, and about a third voted R (a very small amount more voted R than voted D). A fairly small fraction of people who’d voted D in 2020 didn’t vote, and an even smaller fraction switched from D to R.
Who are the bad people? The 20% of the electorate who are locked in MAGA? The 10% of the electorate who pretty much always vote R because they think Ds are worse? The 4% or so who stayed home? Or the 2.5% who switched (for whatever reason?) (all percentages rough, my estimate).
I voted for Harris too. I bought into the lie that at least with Dems we could reason with them. I was wrong. I own that.
If we had REFUSED to take for any candidate supported Israel, they would have been FORCED to take real action.
We accepted HOLOCAUST and this is our just reward.
None of this makes sense. If you now believe it was wrong for you to have voted for Harris, then you should be happy she lost and therefore happy Trump won.
Two things can be bad. I am sorry that Trump won and sorry that Democrats demanded we cater to a candidate that enabled genocide.
You're deflecting so that you don't have to engage the main point. Compromise with genocide is evil. To support that "for the greater good" is not righteous.
How exactly do you know you were wrong about that?? What evidence since Nov. 2024 indicates that actually Harris would have been as bad or worse than Trump on the Gaza and Palestinian question?
The four years of mass murder we had under Biden/Harris? That they both refused to denounce Israel and even denounced the ICC ruling instead. That they let their state department commit FRAUD to give Israel weapons in violation of our own laws…
Violence begets violence. You support the oppressor, you get oppression. All you on the left mocking the right, when you did the same thing. Have done for 50 yrs.
Can’t understand why we never have positive change…
agreed. Also, I think it’s true that certain cultures in certain times bring out the badness in people who might not otherwise be bad in a different culture. That doesn’t mean they’re not bad!
do liberals need to do a better job of reaching dummies by appealing to self interest? sure. But there are a lot of other actors at play too, including a media that actively lied about the salience of various issues and the plans for such.
Americans' commitment to the facade of niceness will be the death of the Republic; you see it in our journalists who simply won't challenge powerful people who lie to them in increasingly fantastical and obvious ways.
I love "this isn't who we are" and I'm all like "I've read a pre-Ministry of Information history book and of course this is who we are." We overview incipient democracies at the behest of FRUIT companies, for shit's sake.
Comments
And while I think Harris could have done better (and Biden *massively* better), it's still a tightrope: there are tons of loseable pro-Israel (stupid/evil) D voters out there.
If genocide isn’t your red line, then you don’t have one. If your prosperity must be bought with the blood of the innocent, then you don’t deserve it.
If we had REFUSED to take for any candidate supported Israel, they would have been FORCED to take real action.
We accepted HOLOCAUST and this is our just reward.
You're deflecting so that you don't have to engage the main point. Compromise with genocide is evil. To support that "for the greater good" is not righteous.
Can’t understand why we never have positive change…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-o_XCDTyB4