One of the biggest unforced failures of the Biden administration is the reported complaint of Joe Biden that people weren’t acknowledging the economic turnaround.
Biden did a lot of good for the economy! Massive stimulus via the infrastructure bill, a sensible approach to recovery from Covid, acknowledging that recovery from an inflationary period would be necessarily painful, etc. He was a steady hand at a time when America needed one.
But what sends me into apoplexy, what really grinds my gears, is that this motherfucker was so out of touch to believe that this was a messaging problem. He felt that Americans had not yet heard of his accomplishments in turning around the tide of economic misfortune, how badly the republicans would have bungled it, and how the next four years would have been a period of huge growth based on the previous four.
All of these points were absolutely true.
But there is no housing supply. The economic pressures are so hard on young people that their biological impulses are changing.
Young empiricists have taken a look at the climate and have correctly deduced that their future is full of pain in the absence of truly radical action.
And Kamala’s strategy for relieving pressure on the housing market was a $25,000 credit for first time home buyers? In an environment where housing prices have doubled and tripled in fifteen years?
I am one of the very few members of the public that attended Feinstein’s funeral at San Francisco City Hall. And the only one there that day wearing sneakers. I attended her lying in state, paid my respects to a committed civil servant, and in the book, cautioned Pelosi against a similar, “ignominious” end. Then I hear that Pelosi has filed to run again in 2026. As an 86 year old.
At some point the Democratic leadership looks less out of touch and more actively malicious considering the serious and existential crises of the young and near-young in the United States.
The country is in decline because of its extreme individualism, its lack of compassion, and its ruthless “politics is the art of the possible” approach by leaders who could not possibly inspire with bold leadership.
The party is chasing local maxima.
Harris’ solution to the housing problem really annoyed me. There are so many other more effective ways to go about making housing more affordable but she just ignored them. This, in my uneducated opinion, would have also motivated more voters.
In a more general sense, the mainstream Democrats have always had a difficult time with messaging which is nothing new but really showed itself in this past election.
Democrats think that if you just spend time educating the voting population on all the good their policies will do then the voter will make a rational decision in the voting booth. And in the exit polling that is exactly who voted for Harris, highly educated people that like that kind of lecture type of politicking. But most people don’t vote like that - they don’t want a professor in the oval office they want a cheerleader.
Disagree on only one point: the time for a cheerleader has passed.
The people now want a Teddy Roosevelt progressive. A person who physically kicks asses and legally enforces regulations on the Corporates who are undermining the country’s well-being to pad their pockets. A leader who is tough, speaks plainly, and has grit and vision for the conservation of natural resources.
None of these qualities describe any current members of the Democratic party.
There’s a lesson in Teddy though. The industry republicans did their damnedest to sideline him and would’ve succeeded if McKinley hadn’t been shot. They put him in the vice presidency in the first place to get him out of the New York governors house.
Yep. Lots of lessons in our historical precedents that Dems pretend don’t exist.
Nevertheless, I would 100% vote for Teddy Roosevelt’s corpse
Now what exactly did trump offer in terms of the economy?
Lies. But rubes love lies because they’re palatable and don’t create the challenge of critical thinking.
And that’s why HE wins. You can’t be someone like that if you’re on the back foot (incumbent). Hell just lie, the media and podcasters will let him get away with it because he’s the challenger. And you’re doomed. It’s that simple. You’re not beating that.
I would argue that neither the Harris campaign, nor her DNC masters actually wanted to win.
The Dems cherish their “underdog” persona and by losing, they know they’ll be getting even more donations from frantic, fearful Americans. And by losing, the Dems don’t actually have to produce any governance results. They can just sit back and wag their fingers at voters with a smug, “I told you this would happen,” face.
Not by moving to the right like Harris did. You don’t get Republican votes by showing off how you can break solidarity with Muslims, the undocumented, and trans people. You don’t get Republican votes by parading around not one but two Cheneys. If you’re a Democrat, there’s NOTHING you can do to get Republican votes.
But these actions disillusion your base and they stay home.
Very well said. I hated Harris’ “economic plan.” It wasn’t going to make a dent. It might get some people in rural passover states afford a home, which is great for them, but would do nothing but maybe raise costs of entry level tiny condos in any city.
But I do think they accomplished a lot in Biden’s term. If you compare the US’ inflation to other 1st world countries, we recovered far better. We were moving in the right direction. It would have been far worse with Republicans.
And they accomplished all that with a festering rot of DINO obstructionists in the senate, and a republican controlled House. They did an amazing job with the limitations they had.
But they didn’t adequately lay the blame in the right hands. They didn’t address greedy corporate Housing speculation. They tried and failed to reign in “shrinkflation”. And they failed to bring some sanity to the immigrant blaming, and instead somewhat joined in on it.
And Kamala’s strategy for relieving pressure on the housing market was a $25,000 credit for first time home buyers?
This was also going to be coupled with a large tax credit to construction companies for building single-family homes and another tax credit for selling them to first-time homeowners.
Taken together, that all sounds pretty good. But I think what really needs to change is zoning laws. The problem is that the federal government has no control over the zoning ordinances of local communities. Hell, state governments barely have control over that. Usually whenever a rezoning of a neighborhood is brought up, it causes a firestorm at city council meetings.
Why is every Democratic policy a tax credit?
DNC:
“The DNC hears ya. The DNC don’t care.”
Democrats: “Understood. We must try harder to win over the center-right.”
Honestly, we should have seen it coming with all the “nostalgia” for the Good Old Days of GWB.
This was literally what the Harris campaign walked away saying.
And here I am nostalgic for the good ol days of Obama.
I do miss when my tax dollars got spent to keep American corporate greed from crashing the global economy, again, and merely continuing the neo-Crusades instead of escalating them.
That was a nice almost decade.
Clinton is the last era before the shit hit the fan.
Enron, 9.11, the mideast war series, 2008, etc.
“center right”:
I’ve been called center right but I wouldn’t describe myself so. I’m right and left. It balances in the center but most centrist positions are corporatist and authoritative, and I hate both. Man did this election ever suck. I’m always stoked for the primaries and hoping to get a free thinker in the mix but this year we didn’t even get primaries.
My message to the dnc
Fuck you we elected Bernie and you ran Hillary and then we elected Bernie and you gave us Biden. Fuck you.
They knew Bernie might actually improve the lives of Americans and our rich overlords shudder at the thought of that.
Who elected Bernie in 2020? Biden wiped the floor with him. Maybe more people should’ve voted for Bernie in the primary then.
I mean, the commenter is overstating what happened in 2016 and 2020, but Biden did not, “wipe the floor,” with him. Obama and the DNC convinced every centrist to drop out, consolidating the moderate vote around Biden, while Warren stayed in, splitting the progressive vote, and Bloomberg used his personal wealth to run anti-Bernie ads. Then Biden had to ask Bernie to help him craft a platform just so he could be electable. It’s less that, “Biden wiped the floor with him,” and more that, “the entire Democratic party lined up to block Bernie so Biden could limp over the finish line.”
If Bernie can’t win the primary under those conditions how can he win against the GOP and Trump and the billionaire class and all the industry lobbyist that don’t want him in office? They aren’t going to play fair or nice.
Yeah, but the Republicans don’t have as much control over the general elections as Democrats do over the primary. They don’t get to control who gets on the ballot, they don’t get to set the schedule for a months-long voting process, they don’t have superdelegates to tip the scales…primaries are an internal process set up by the parties to give them maximum influence, not a level playing field.
Democrats don’t run attack ads against the other primary candidates. Running as a primary candidate doesn’t require the amount of funding that a presidential election campaign requires. Unfortunately I don’t think Bernie would get any air time if he was just funded by grassroots donations.
Democrats don’t run attack ads against the other primary candidates.
Guess no one told Bloomberg that. Also, we’ve just come through the second election where Trump won despite spending far less than the Democrats. I’m sure the billionaire class would go hard against Sanders, but spending isn’t everything in campaigns anymore, especially against populists.
Russias invasion of Ukraine needed Trump to win. Their bot farms aren’t on the books. Billionaires were literally buying votes and that wasn’t counted as campaign spending. To claim Trump won because spending isn’t everything in campaigns anymore is to ignore how Trump won.
Which is normal politics. Why didn’t Warren and Bernie make a deal then?
Face it- if he can’t win a primary then that’s on him. And this is coming from someone who voted for him in 2020.
Point being- people need to stop acting like there is some mythical force stopping progressives. If they truly were that numerous then Bernie would’ve been elected as the candidate in 2020 (2016 I’ll give you the DNC fuckery.)
Moreover, they could elect AOCs all over the country too. But guess what- either they aren’t that numerous or they’re lazy as shit. Either way, you get “centrist” candidates like Biden. People seriously need to wake up and either start voting en masse in the primaries or realize that America is just not that progressive.
Buddy, half your comment history is whining about non-voters costing Harris the election, and you’re gonna turn around and say, “less people voted for Bernie, deal with it?” Bernie had the entire party lined up to block him; name another candidate the party has done that to. Meanwhile, Harris had a level playing field with Trump and he wiped the floor with her.
Face it- if she can’t win an election then that’s on her. And this is coming from someone who voted for her in 2024. People seriously need to wake up and either start voting en masse in the general elections or realize that America is just not that moderate.
or realize that America is just not that moderate.
I think we can look at the House of Representatives for a better representation of how moderate/progressive the electorate is. Where a statewide or national election requires a lot of money, a single district is much more accessible for a candidate with a smaller staff to campaign in.
I think the real crux of our problem is the distance between how people feel about individual progressive policies vs how they feel about progressive people who espouse all those policies. The right has been very successful at linking the culture war issues to progressives and demonizing them as SJWs, to distract from actual policy proposals.
I think we can look at the House of Representatives for a better representation of how moderate/progressive the electorate is.
Sure, as long as we ignore that the Democratic Party protects centrists and actively opposes progressives in primaries.
The national party does not invest all that heavily into individual district primary races. When a few tens of thousands of people at most are voting, there’s just only so far money can go. It’s very feasible for a candidate with a small staff of volunteers to simply canvas the district themselves.
I’m afraid that conspiracy is not the reason we don’t have more progressives in the House.
I don’t think that’s entirely correct. If what you were saying about progressive politicians were true, Bernie Sanders would not be the most popular politician in the country. I think the real problem is that the Democrats are no longer credible messengers of a working class message. I think that’s why Dan Osborne won by not only running as an independent, but flat out rejecting the local Democrats endorsement.
Also, it’s important to remember that it was the centrists who pivoted towards culture war issues when they no longer had a progressive economic message they could run on. As Hillary Clinton said during the 2016 primary:
If we broke up the big banks tomorrow…would that end racism? Would that end sexism? Would that end discrimination against the LGBT community? Would that make people feel more welcoming to immigrants overnight?
Bernie is the most popular politician in the country? Regardless though, what popularity he has does not extend to all people who espouse progressive ideas, so other factors are at play.
I also don’t see that as a pivot as much as a slow march towards equal rights that dems have been fighting for for decades. And even so, it does not have much to do with the messaging strategy employed by the right. We’re not fighting against facts, we’re fighting against a messaging framework that paints progressive people as bad while ignoring the content of progressive policy proposals.
It is non-voters. Whether they’re left leaning or center or whatever really doesn’t matter. They’re going to get it one way or the other. They had a chance to drive the car more left but decided it wasn’t worth showing up so now it’s going full speed right wing back to the 50s and worse.
Congrats?
I mean, you’re basically making my point. People who don’t vote decide the election with their inaction. Whether it was not coming out for Bernie or not coming out for Kamala, it’s the same thing.
So yes, thank you for proving my point better than I could. I appreciate the assist.
Bonus- Bernie finished behind Kamala in Vermont. So let’s not act like progressivism is some silver bullet here.
Buddy, you’re proving mine. If Bernie’s loss in the primary is proof that Americans aren’t that progressive, then Harris and Hillary’s losses in the general prove that Americans aren’t that centrist. You can’t have it both ways.
So that would mean that the majority of the electorate is far-right, which would make no sense given how strongly progressive ballot measures overperformed against the Harris campaign, or why Bernie polled more favorably against Trump than Clinton or Biden. Somehow, Americans would have disliked centrist and progressive politicians and like far-right politicians, but for some reason prefer progressive policies, and also favor the most high profile progressive in the Senate…or, Occam’s Razor, people prefer progressives, but the Democrats keep rat-fucking them in the primaries in favor of centrists.
Harris and Hillary’s losses in the general prove that Americans aren’t that centrist.
Expect Trump took the center voters. I think we all see through him, but the center voter loves him for economy and jobs.
It makes perfect sense when you realize places like Missouri and Florida voted for abortion rights yet also voted for Republicans and trump all over too.
And again, there’s no big magical force keeping progressives out of winning primaries. They just don’t. So again, my point, either people aren’t that progressive or progressives fucking suck at voting. Either way, same result.
Moreover, we’ll use your metric of progressive policies winning over Harris and analyze why she won more over Bernie himself. Must mean people are more moderate right?
I recall that in 2016, it was apparent to me that those in control of the media were intentionally giving Bernie as little coverage as possible. The stuff they were doing was blatant, once you became aware of it.
I remember seeing a news segment where they said something like, “The current leading Democrat in the primaries is Hillary Clinton. Yeah she’s doing great. Also in 3rd place is Martin O’Malley or something.” They would just blatantly omit Bernie.
I kept seing stuff like this and it really made an impression on me. Then, when the whole GameStop stock thing happened and all those private investors were making tons of money, taking it from rich hedgefunds, the media started telling everyone how dumb they would be to try to get in on the action. They were protecting the interests of the rich. It was a little intimidating to see them all do it, implying who was really in control of information and public perception.
So, I disagree. It’s not as simple as, “America is not that progressive.”
That was back when Facebook was actually doing something useful: there were so many huge Bernie rallies posted to Facebook that the MSM was forced to acknowledge him. Now that social media has been “fixed”, we won’t see anything like that again.
That’s entirely the media and rich people. How does that excuse people not voting for Bernie in 2020?
What the media presents has a strong influence on public perception. When the races are close, they only need to sway a few percent of voters.
Part of me thinks Bernie never really wanted to be president, I think he thinks he can do more good as a senior senator pushing the DNC left while trying to stop the right from whatever evil they’re planning this week, and maybe he can, but so far that hasn’t worked very well. If he and the squad broke ties with the DNC and started their own party, and were able to pull enough of the left off the couch and away from the DNC to make the DNC the “spoiler” that needed to “fall in line or else Trump wins” that would be the best imo
Kind of a reverse Freedom Caucus. I could potentially see that working. Then again, people say AOC is no longer pure, etc. so I’m not sure progressives have the stomach to stick together long enough for that to work.
They’d need a solidly progressive platform… The individuals matter less than the goals… Leave guns and abortion on the table for later… Stick to all the things we mostly all agree on. Keep the messaging simple too… “Life sucks. It sucks because you don’t have enough money…YOU deserve to be making more money for whatever you are doing. The corporations and billionaires are taking YOUR money, and we’re going to take it back and give it to you”… Maybe follow up with a bunch of times rich people got more at everyone else’s expense.
Now this I agree on. They don’t dumb down the message nearly enough.
that comment confused me as well. with hilary. yeah but 2020 honestly people wanted more of a conservative sure thing because some yahoos thought they would shake things up in 2016 by letting trump win. hmmm. I wonder what type of canidate will be in 2024 and whos fault it will be that its not a liberal enough canidate.
Leftist really live in a bubble. A guy loses the primaries TWICE, but somehow Dems screwed him over, lol
Problem is like a lot of things, even from the far right as well, there is truth to it. Democrats put in the super delegates so their primaries are not very democratic but its because they wanted to maintain a centerist position. It is funny that I would see someone complain about bidens age then say we should have bernie in. I wonder what we would be like if dems had not done the super delegates? They might have went left the way republicans went right and we might have had an actual centerist party come up.
Biden is the most left leaning president we’ve had in the modern era.
sure but that just shows the effect the super delegates have had in the modern era.
Bernie lost the popular vote in the primaries twice. It’s mostly white guys that want him, honestly, which isn’t a popular sentiment but it’s true.
He doesn’t speak to the problems of marginalized communities who make up a large portion of the Democratic base.
The message to
Democratsneo-libs and neo-cons, is clear: you must dumpneoliberal economicscorporatism.Translation: “Change who you are. Completely, not superficially. Just don’t be who you are and have been.”
Which won’t happen because that would require them to turn their back on the donor class, corporate media and lobbyists.
So what can be done?
Armed revolution in the face of 5th generation multi-role fighter aircraft and predator drones with hellfire missiles seems like a fool’s errand.
I’d say let’s start with trying to vote out the DNC leadership in the next round of primaries.
We’re gonna just continue to blame the Dems while ignoring that a massive online propaganda campaign brainwashed enough morons into voting again for a convicted felon who tried to steal the last election, and already had a dogshit first term? Even if you “fix” the dems, the propaganda will still paint whoever is representing them as worse than the fascist puppets on the other side, and the masses of dimwits will swallow it while thinking they’re enlightened centrists.
Propaganda doesn’t work if people are happy with their current situation.
BS, there were polls showing the massive disparity between how people responded to “how would you rate the current economy?” and “how would you rate your own financial situation?”, about 70% had said their own situation was good or very good yet a similar amount said that the countries situation was either bad or very bad. Absolutely brainwashed
Do you have links to these polls, please? I would be interested in knowing how they were carried out.
Here, I should’ve included them in the previous comment.
- https://www.axios.com/2023/08/18/americans-economy-bad-personal-finances-good
- https://fortune.com/2024/05/30/economy-personal-finance-consumer-confidence-inflation-unemployment-jobs/
- https://www.axios.com/2024/01/17/americans-are-actually-pretty-happy-with-their-finances
This was also quite telling:
–Thanks for the links! I’m having trouble finding the exact questions asked, but when I look at the graph on this article: https://www.axios.com/2024/06/03/americans-finances-us-economy-outlook-divide
It says on the legend “Own finances (doing at least OK)” and “National economy (good or excellent)”. This is subjective, of course, but the bar for “OK” seems a lot lower than “good”. If someone asks how I’m doing and if things are going bad but I don’t want to burden them with my concerns, my go-to is “OK” or “fine” but never “good”. Simply feeling like I’ll get by is enough for “OK” but that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m optimistic. This would explain the entire world locking down but personal feelings of finance remaining pretty steady except for a bump UP after massive financial stimulus before a dip back down as greedflation gobbled that all up and then some.
As for misinformed views, those will be influenced by whoever is in power. Assuming the economy remains steady (which is a shaky assumption given many factors), I’m sure the same poll done again would have strong democrat and republican supporters swap their sentiments even though the underlying didn’t change.
As for misinformed views, those will be influenced by whoever is in power.
The point is that Dems generally have more accurate assessments of what’s actually going on. Republicans are notoriously conspiratorial and misinformed and only getting worse. Even with republicans in power, you won’t see such misaligned views from the left.
There can be more than one lesson to learn from an election cycle. We need to learn all of the lessons. Accelerationism was a problem this election cycle. The right-wing information sphere continues to be a problem in the US.
The Democrats are not blameless either. Democratic consultants ran the Harris campaign into the ground and they are refusing to learn the lessons. As one of the two viable political parties, the Democrats are still our most useful tool out of those two political parties, but we have to recognize that they are neoliberals. edit: clarification
“Nothing will fundamentally change” + “there is not a thing that comes to mind.”
Two killer statements.
To be fair Biden’s “nothing will fundamentally change” is a lot better with context. “There’s not a thing that comes to mind” is fucking inexcusable though.
To be fair Biden’s “nothing will fundamentally change” is a lot better with context.
To be fair, it became clear over the course of 4 years that it was correct at face value.
Democrats:
Oh. The message I got was that many people today are so immature that they would rather join a collective psychosis than accept their own part in humanity
To be fair, there are multiple lessons to learn from this election cycle.
But who will pay for our campaigns if we don’t lick the boot of oligarchs?
Before the 1980s that used to be the unions paying and funding campaigns. The reason Democrats started chasing and boot-licking oligarchs. Is because the unions stopped funding elections and campaigns at the rate they had been before the 1980s. If you can figure out why that was. There were two solid hints given. Then we could probably understand why they’re seeking funding from oligarchs. And how we should probably go about changing that.
People love to complain about Democrats begging for oligarchs money without understanding why. Which helps the oligarchs. And gives them even more control over the DNC than they would have otherwise. I’m not saying we should accept the oligarch funding and ownership. But until we come to terms with why that came to be and address it appropriately. It won’t end anytime soon.
It sounds like you’re saying we need to bribe our politicians to get them to represent us. Is that what you’re getting at? Because I fundamentally disagree with that concept.
Only if you consider funding bribing. Was it bribing when the unions financed the Democratic party before 1980?
Yes. All money needs to be removed from politics with the same amount given to all candidates to run with and dark money investigated and prosecuted. Politicians shouldn’t be NASCAR teams, and lobbying should be called what it actually is.
I agree. The irony is that we’re going to need money and resources to do that. I would rather it wasn’t from oligarchs. The question is then who from. Democrats have “technically” broken fundraising records repeatedly with small donors. Every 4 years. Which is a tiny meaningless record. Republicans and conservatives spend MULTIPLES of that 4 year aggregate EVERY YEAR. On campaigning and messaging.
It was recently revealed that many conservative media personalities and influencers . People like Tim Poole were being paid millions of dollars a year. To put out one barely edited propaganda video a week. To put that in perspective, over the course of two weeks. With 1/5th the effort of a left leaning media personality like Sam Cedar. They make more than he does in a year. In just two weeks. This isn’t isolated either. A big group were found to be unregistered foreign agents of Russia because of this. And Russia didn’t invent it. Our own oligarchs have been patronizing conservative media outlets and influencers like this for decades.
How do we compete with that? Serious question.
Strict campaign finance laws, where all political donations go to a bipartisan elections department and then are split equally between all candidates in graduated stages from the primaries through until the general election. No contributions to candidates directly, no PACs or Super PACs (they can exist but fund everyone equally), no ads paid for outside the provided war chest. Any dark money found results in IRS forensic audits and criminal penalties for the campaigns.
If you want more money for your “side”, you get it at roughly 50% of what you put in. The “other side” gets the other half. Should still drive donations, including mega-doners, because their candidate still gets more money for ads and campaigning. This also allows 3rd party candidates to compete equally at all stages. If we can get graduated polling too this should spur a further plurality of viable candidates.
Political commentary from news and independent “journalism” on places like YouTube would still be covered under free speech, but audits are allowed to look into them being dark money ads with the above consequences for the campaigns.
Foreign ads are what they are unfortunately, but the IRS is good at finding US money laundering through offshore institutions. Make sending money to foreign assets to be spent circumventing these laws especially steep. A few campaign managers and money managers getting 20-life or going to Gitmo for laundering campaign money through Russian agents should help curb some shenanigans.
Sounds great. How do we get there? Campaign finance laws are written and voted on by politicians. Why would a politician funded by oligarchs cut off their own funding?
If you want campaign finance reform, you need politicians in office who are willing to vote for it. Which means you need to get them into office. Which means their campaigns need funding.
That means we need a plan to fund campaigns in the current landscape, before reform.
You can disagree in principle, but that’s what liberal democracy is, and that’s what participating in it in any meaningful way entails.
Perhaps that is why many choose not to participate
I think the campaigns at this point can be funded with regular donations. I don’t think corporate donations are even needed at this point.
The key thing to realize is that in a presidential race, you reach advertising saturation. Hillary and Kamala both massively outspent Trump in their campaigns, but they still lost. Their financial advantage didn’t help because ads reach saturation. At some point, everyone already knows about the candidates, and additional money spent really doesn’t help you.
The Democratic party could get by just fine with the amount of donations they can raise from individual donors. They don’t do this because the consultants that run the DNC ad buying get paid a percentage of all ad buys. And the DNC itself simply benefits from having larger budgets in general. So the push is always to have as much ad spend as possible, even if having that large ad spend requires cozying up to oligarchs.
They should. But they can’t currently be. And no one has a plan on how to get it there. Actually Republicans and the oligarchs are actively making it harder to do. They own all the popular TV, radio, print, and social media and are turning most of the people you know or have contact with against it.
The pittance Democrats and the DNC are raising from small donors etc can’t even begin to get us there. What’s worse is that they’re trying to get the money to actually push back. And people want to crucify them for it. But not provide actual alternatives. Actual left wing media is atrophied and under funded. With no reach or presence. But vital in addition to campaign funding. Just completely ignored.
A campaign for someone people wants will pay for itself. Everything will be provided and the press will be free if it wishes to remain clicked and watched
This billion dollar campaign frenzy every 4 years is an industrial complex that needs to die
As an outsider it seemed more like they had an image problem than an issue with their concrete policies. Obviously it could be both but I got a sense people believed the dems were out of touch.
That is because the democrats have abandoned.the working class and use guilt and loyalty to effectively fool the middle class into policies favoring the wealthy.
Neither party is responsive to the working class because hourly wages are too low vs prices to allow for significant political donations.
So until actrue 3rd party catches the working class and moves american politics leftward, its just fewer and fewer with more and more.
Hence, keep people stupid so they dont figure it out.
There were plenty of problems with the concrete policies on offer.
‘most lethal military’, tough on crime, secure the border… it was ridiculous to see how far right the supposed left went in search of votes. Harris’s platform looked more like Trump’s from 2016 than it did Hilary’s.
“Look! Dick Cheney likes us!”
A cracked brick wall is more visible than a sinking foundation.
Nice metaphor
This is BS. People saying Kamala was too liberal, or too centrist, she was riding too much on Biden achievements or not enough etc etc.
The real reason for this is that majority of people no longer get their news from MSM, they get their news from social media which are hevily slanted for trump. Not only GOP understands how influential those are, but they are helped with foreign entities who are free to use these media as well.
This also isn’t just happening to US but also to Europe.
The fucking solution is to get your family off of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok etc. it is a cancer and essentially hacks their brain.
You might think that social media is great, because everyone can have a voice. This might be true for sites like Lemmy, but in other places what you post is irrelevant, because their algorithm controls what others see. It is very clever, because they can hide behind freedom of speech to not restrict the sites, while essentially still having full control of what it is shown and zero consequences.
With AI they don’t even need people anymore they can generate content themselves and say it is a real user.
Why do you think companies involved in social media are also heavily invested with generative AI?
The fucking solution is to get your family off of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok etc. it is a cancer and essentially hacks their brain.
What you’re implying here is that people aren’t smart enough to navigate social media intelligently, without being duped by propaganda and group think, yet you are.
Protecting dumb people by hiding them from social media, is a bad fix for a symptom of other major problems. Fixing symptoms like this is never a good solution.
What we need is education massively overhauled, to the point it would be unrecognizable to what we have today. People should have the critical thinking skills and educational background to laugh there ass off and shrug off
right wingpropaganda, and never let it take hold.This is a much bigger problem, and we’re losing significantly, but it’s what should be discussed instead of just hiding social media from people.
Most people in the US do not have the requisite media understanding to navigate social media, or even media, for that matter, without being duped.
This is evident in the growth of the flat earth movement, and other literally idiotic movements.
The social media sites are known to collect vast information about us. The explanation is that it is meant for targeted ads, but the same information can be also used to know which buttons to press.
You scroll between funny videos and once in a while you get something that maybe will anger you, or maybe scare and in any way impact what you will do.
Just taking a recent example. To pro Palestinian people they received messages that Harris is bad for Palestine and we can show her and protest by not voting.
Meanwhile the same social media was telling pro Israeli people that they should not vote for Harris, because she is pro Palestine.
This is how they are getting desired outcome. And unlike MSM they can fine tune the message to specific category of people.
Follow up question: how would this hypothetical educational reform even work? I fully understand that education funding in the US is very much at risk with darth cheeto coming back, but say you managed to creat this curiculum. How would it be different from what we currently have, and do you see a path of reaching it from our current system? (Would it require starting small with charter schools or is it something we could realisticly change with a large bill + funding)
Not trying to be a bother bear, but you proposed a solution so I want to see where the collective would take it.
Honest answer: I have absolutely no idea. I didn’t propose a solution per se, other than “change it drastically”. And more than just critical thinking skills.
The most important thing is we need a society where the people in power and decision making actually desire this. Our power structures don’t want this, as we all know. Keeping us dumb and uninformed, makes us easier to manipulate and control, and do the low paying jobs nobody really wants. Without this we can’t even think about major change. Our purpose to “produce and consume” is the foundation for the billionaires wealth.
I don’t have any answer on how to teach critical thinking specifically, we need smart people (altruistic, not power seeking or other agendas) to help architect this. All I know is anyone leaving k-12 should graduate with very good critical thinking skills as well as be scientifically literate, reading/writing, other necessities… Our current public education system just seems like an indoctrination to show up to a building 5 days a week to do boring monotonous tasks. My friends and I hated school, and having friends at a young age only made it bearable. Ironically, I and many people love to learn many different topics. I had to learn about this outside of school, how does that make sense? And I’m talking STEM related stuff! Things that are valuable to the capitalism machine!
How about we also emphasize finding individuals’ passions and natural skills, and helping them pursue them earlier, in addition to necessities.
I’d love to see some pretty drastic and crazy structural changes as well: imaging removing time as the fixed variable for learning. If you want to learn calculus, you’re going to learn the entire curriculum. Instead of getting a B “learning” 80% of the material on the test, you aren’t done until you master all of it. You get an A if you do it in 6 weeks. B if 10 weeks, etc. If you still haven’t mastered it in a year, you probably should come to the conclusion you’re not going to be a mathematician and choose something else… I love this idea but recognize how difficult it would be, how would it even work? This fixed time deadline nonsense is a capitalism thing. I hate it.
None of this matters though unless we get control. We need control first before even thinking about implementation and change.
”and shrug off
right wingpropaganda" FTFYYeah fair enough.
Being influenced / tricked / conned has surprisingly little to do with being ‘smart’ or ‘educated’. Smart people can still be tricked.
A way to manipulate people is to give them plausible (mis)information. What counts as ‘plausible’ depends on a person’s education and interests; but there is always an area of vulnerability at the edges of a person’s understanding. That’s why there are so many different layers to misinformation campaigns. They are targeting different groups of people. And it is highly dangerous to start believing you can see through them all - because in reality, you only see through the ones that don’t target you.
One of the propaganda powers of algorithmically controlled social media is that it is if a user gives up enough of their person info, it makes it possible to automatically target that person with misinformation that is specially suited to their interests, circles of trust, and level of understanding.
… anyway, my point is that although education is always good; it doesn’t defeat propaganda outright.
Section 230 protection also needs to be removed. Let civil cases take care of misinformation and such. Currently content aggregators take no liability in what they choose to show in the their feed. Between sorting chronologically and machine learning, there is a line to be drawn.
I was initially strongly in defense of it, but it now benefits corporations and almost no private users (as it originally was intended). So removing it probably would be a net benefit. Or maybe make it only applicable to private people and non profit.
Yeah! People need to go back to trusting good ol cable news! They’ve never steered us wrong
There’s been a right wing media since the 1970’s, Xitter has always been an also ran social media site and while Facebook is the largest social media site it’s long past it’s heyday and is filled primarily with bots and boomers.
You’re getting everything backwards. The only reason why Democrats won in the past 50 years is because they have been riding on the their past actual progressive achievements like Social Security, Medicare, Good Stamps, The Civil Rights Act, etc.
Now that they’re done nothing but take turns with the GOP destroying those government safety nets there’s no goddamn reason for voters to vote for Democrats.
Oh and the whole reason why the right has a strangle hold on media is because of Democratic deregulation of media and telecommunications.
Simpson’s Skinner meme, “no, it’s the voters that are wrong”
Both can be true.
But only one lets the party keep ignoring the voters and moving to the right. So that’s the one the party will go with.
“Progressive roots”?
For some people FDR is the closest thing they can imagine to be progressive politics. The progressive-conservative switch in the Republican and Democratic Parties always makes for weird statements. You’ve got neo-nazis and neo-confederates controlling the Republican Party and Republicans say they are the party of Lincoln.
Lol, maybe that’s what progressives need to do just invade Republican politics and take IT over!
Switch the sides again!
Might be easier than getting Democrats to treat progressives as valued members of their constituency.
That’s what Democrats have been trying to do since Bill Clinton. The Republicans have already been captured by the MAGA movement, where as the Democrats have yet to be captured by a movement. So for progressives and socialists, it should be easier to capture the Democrats.
It’s like pokemon. =p
Honestly it’s more possible…
I wouldn’t be surprised if Tankies unironically liked Democrats better when they were the KKK.
With how eagerly centrists have been throwing vulnerable minorities under the bus, it’s clear that they bitterly regret the civil rights act and the voting rights act because they cost the party the support of the bigots they love dearly.
I’m black, the Dems have not thrown me under the bus.
Give 'em time. This last election cycle they got Muslims, the undocumented, and trans people.
Dems didn’t overturn affirmative action.
Dems didn’t kill the police brutality bill in 2020.
Dems aren’t the ones fighting tooth and nail to keep confederate flags and statues up.
It’s pretty obvious to me whose tryna to throw black people under the bus.
If you think they won’t abandon you in order to chase nonexistent gettable Republican votes, look at who they already abandoned.
Republicans are obviously worse and I never said they weren’t. That doesn’t mean that Democrats are reliable allies, because unless your name is Netanyahu, they just aren’t.
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No he’s not.
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No I’m not.
Anyone who uses the word “tankie” as a pejorative is a dumbass and needs to touch grass. Same goes for people who defend people’s use of the word “tankie”.
The term tankie is used to vilify leftists and sow division amongst leftists. It is also used by chronically online liberals to describe anyone who is left of center.
It’s used as a pejorative for authoritarian “leftists”, e.g. people who could barely be considered left-wing and have more in common with right-wing authoritarians, and who praise authoritarian governments like Russia/China.
Other people on the left don’t want to be associated with that shit, and rightfully so.
Tankies aren’t leftists, they’re state capitalists which is an even stupider version of capitalism than the normal kind. Even the Chinese abandoned you foolish tankies.
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GIven that I’ve had Tankies try to tell me the fight for LGBT rights isn’t worth it because it’s a “distraction” and “actually racist to force other cultures to conform to Western Values”
Yeah…
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If I didn’t vote for Kamela, how exactly would that have changed the outcome? This doesn’t really work when it’s not my actions that caused this problem.
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Hm, who did you vote for? The genocide enabler or the genocide enabler?
I’ll wait while you perform whatever mental gymnastics you need to rationalize how your vote is different than everyone elses.
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My favorite thing about 10hr old accounts is how funny they are.
Given that centrists are parroting “Boys in girl’s sports” bigotry in their own ads, it’s not like y’all weren’t itching to abandon trans people.
