I have problems with people who abstained. The hard thing is, how do you change voter behavior?
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?
Based on the top level comments here - yeah, they still think that Harris is exactly the same as Trump, and have zero regrets.
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.
“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?”
“We let the campaign be run by the same people who already lost against Trump in 2016. Why did we lose?”
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.
We need to make a parallel yet distinct figure of speech to “leopards ate my face” for this behavior. Not to lessen the meaning of fascist leopards but kind of as a contrasting representation of the successes of evil. Something like…
“I fed the hawks, never knowing they would prey on my flock!!”
We have one
“I did not speak up…”
good point but its a lil dark in tone
So is the world right now
Hawks decimated my sheeple.
I dont think Dems have any power left anymore. The latest DNC was worse than clown world. And the unhinged ranting by Dem reps against USAID to Somalia ??? or Yemen ??? or BURMA ??? Are effing kidding me ??? Are there no sensible Dems reading the room ???
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.
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.
Remember, the most constructive thing you can do is get mad at other, equally powerless people like yourself! This is how political change happens.
Remember! People aren’t powerless! Voting is a power! Not voting is not how political change happens
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
It really does baffle me that some people think a lack of an effort will bring about change.
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.”
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.
Never taking responsibility and always blaming others for your failures is basically baked into conservative DNA
“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!”
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.
Part of me wishes I could have a computer good enough to run Eve, but I don’t think I could handle the game and community lore in one whole thing.
I’ve spent 2200 hours in a game with next to zero good updates in 9 years, my brain can handle focusing on stupid bullshit.
But man Eve seems… Weird. In a good and bad way.
White-men for Kamala :'D
So basically, still in denial about how Trump and Netanyahu are going to absolutely wipe out Gaza from history now while gaslighting’ing as hard as r/conservative. The overlap with the way Trump voters handle politics is astounding.
What does any of that have to do with what I said? I’m talking about the strategic decision the Democrats made to not make concessions to the people inflamed by the genocide in Gaza. In no way did I deny that Trump is far worse than Kamala/Biden. Pointing out that Kamala/Biden made a conscious decision to not move left on this issue isn’t gaslighting, not that you’re even using the term correctly
Americans had one vote, and you guys continue to gaslight what it effectively was, for Trump or against Trump. What it wasn’t was an opportunity to change the system by making a political statement, and now all anyone who has fallen for this rhetoric has done is cemented where it’s heading to now. To change it you would have had to work outside the system. Now, even attempting to do so is far more likely to get you locked up. Congrats.
you guys continue to gaslight what it effectively was
You keep using that word but I’m not sure you know what means.
What it wasn’t was an opportunity to change the system by making a political statement
I’m not even advocating for people to vote third party or boycott the election. I’m just making the argument that if a political party wants a group of people’s votes, they should court those people. If they fail to do so, and those people choose not to vote for them, the political party only has itself to blame
Don’t worry, the US looks like US voters won’t have to worry about being able to have any effective choice for much longer.
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!
Yeah, ive said exactly that countless times right before the election, criticize her all you want after the election but ffs, elect her and the average response was something along the lines of “but genocide Joe!” or just nothing .
Also, all those fuckers are gone now, you’re not hearing anything about it anymore so I’m guessing that a lot of them could also have been right wing trolls just pushing people to ensure trump would be voted in
I want to believe that was a large scale, coordinated influence operation, but the truth is probably a bunch of scattered, uncoordinated young folks tring to make a statement
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.
I wrote the comment below on a thread that got locked while I was writing. TL;DR: Any bonehead who thinks that every single voter is politically-engaged and fully-informed, and that 6 MILLION of them all made a rational, reasoned decision to sit out the election is dumber than they look.
Oh, well, 18 months, what a slog! /s
Look, I’ve spent close to 30 years now detailing that this fucking insane “lesser evil” slide-to-the-right thing that Democrats were doing was going to end in evil. (That is, fascism.) Either the Democrats themselves would become what we feared, or the greater evil would happen to win.
Guess what? I was fucking wrong. I admit it now. I didn’t guess that BOTH would happen simultaneously. It was bad enough more than 20 years ago when my Senator was the only vote against the PATRIOT ACT. It got worse when Obama decided to abolish due process and the rule of law. But by 2024, Democrats were straight up aiding and abetting the biggest war crime of all. Jesus jumpin’ Christ on a pogo stick, how did we get to a place where that is the lesser evil?
Y’all couldn’t vote for Nader in 1996, because “he can’t win.” Well, guess what, bucko, we had to change course somehow. He, or a spiritual successor, had to win, or we’d get… well, look around. It was clear even back then. We had to at least try something different, other than the lesser evil every time.
As they say, the best time to change was then, and the second-best time is now. But, no, Kamala Harris couldn’t change her mind on genocide to win. No, sir! We have standards of evil to maintain, you see. Meanwhile, the billionaires weren’t going away. The wealth inequality wasn’t shrinking. Late-stage capitalism wasn’t on track to make the serfs’ lives better. The climate crisis would still loom. Charismatic fools like Rogan et al. are still young. So the choice in 2024 was fascism now, or fascism later. 2032, most likely, when the partisan pendulum would predictably swing the other way. 2028, possibly.
Is it any wonder that many voters felt overwhelmed, hopeless, defeated, and declined to participate, through the fabulous power of denial? Politics is depressing, the system is big, my vote is inconsequential… Y’know, denial, that power that we’ve all honed through a lifetime of practice—knowing the horrors of industrial meat production and still ordering a burger, knowing the role of CO2 in the climate disaster while waiting in the car at the drive-thru window for it, knowing the causes of cardiovascular disease and still eating it?
Knowing that someday, eventually, we have to fix our political system now that radicals have found its cheat codes, but still browbeating those disengaged voters that they are the ones responsible for this calamity. Yeah. Denial.
The same denial as 30 years ago. This election has been a long time coming. A year and a half? Get outta here.
Truth
This push to demonize the strawman protest voters is an ongoing propaganda campaign to cause poor people to infight.
Strawman?
6.27 Million more people voted for Biden in 2020 than Harris in 2024. That’s not strawmanning, those fuckers stayed home and that is exactly why we are in the current situation.
Let’s say you’re completely right. How does insulting people’s poor choices 4 months ago help us in the present? We can’t create resistance and solidarity if we hold grievances from the past.
Because some people, mostly just tankies and anarchists pretending to be moral abstainers, are unapologetic about helping elect fascism. By exposing and shaming them, onlookers will reconsider their own stance.
There are actual Nazis in this administration, and you’re worried about “tankies?” Get it together man.
One’s enemies can exist on two fronts. It’s happened before.
“We are fighting the wrong enemy.” Allen Dulles expressed this sentiment in 1942, while serving as the Swiss director of the OSS. He had reevaluated the ongoing war with Nazi Germany and decided that the Communist threat was far graver than the National Socialist one.
You’re in good company
They’re literally saying Nazis are also their enemies.
The Tankies are promoting abstaining to help elect the actual Nazis and it fucking worked, so yes I’m worried about the fucking Tankies.
Tankies want 1 thing: “the end of US Imperialism” which is to say for us to all off ourselves so that NATO stops getting in China’s way.
Are the tankies in the room with us now?
Yes.
Are the Tankies in office? Prioritize and Organize.
Well…
2018
“He’s now president for life, president for life. And he’s great,” Trump said, according to audio of excerpts of Trump’s remarks at a closed-door fundraiser in Florida aired by CNN. “And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday,” Trump said to cheers and applause from supporters.
2020
Our relationship with China has now probably never, ever been better," Trump said, adding that he gets on well with President Xi Jinping. “He’s for China, I’m for the U.S., but other than that, we love each other.”
2025
U.S. President Donald Trump said Thursday that he has “always had a great relationship” with Chinese President Xi Jinping and that he looks forward to “getting along with China.”
Yeah, fucking looks like it.
Maybe if some of them would accept responsibility, it would go a long way towards creating that resistance.
I’d actually have a lot of respect for someone someone that could admit they made a huge mistake, because it means they are self aware enough to know that their own behavior has consequences also.
And I can get behind people humble enough to own their mistakes.
But most of these people have the gall to blame people who voted for Harris, or blame Harris herself for not being perfect in every way.
So unless they find some humility, there won’t be any solidarity and I would even go so far as to urge others to refuse to find solidarity with anyone that does not have enough strength of character to own their mistakes.
Guess we should give up then, since things didn’t go our way. Right?
If that’s what you’re taking from what I said, then maybe your should read it again a few times.
Unless you mean to say that you’d rather suffer divided than own your part in the reason for it.
Or worse, to exacerbate racial tensions, is one possibility I fear.
Yeah. I thought this sort of shit would’ve been cut down after those CIA layoffs trump did or whatever, or, that’s what everyone’s been jokingly saying, at least. Probably it’s more along the lines that social media companies keep selectively propagating this shit because they’re a revolving door with those three letter agencies anyways. Saw a LOT of black liberals posting with starbucks cups and mcdonald’s after the election, and talking about how they want to buy beachfront property in gaza, because the michigan vote didn’t come through for Kamala. Most of those people probably weren’t conforming to the boycott in the first place, and more broadly didn’t give a shit at all, but still, incredibly harrowing stuff, there.
Anyways yeah I agree with the other guy, if you wanted to spurn discussion, you probably would’ve been better off posting some shit that’s not like, immediately just blaming the protest votes? Is in better faith more generally? Probably wouldn’t gain as much traction exclusively because of that, as is the case with the site, but you’d at least not be contributing to that sort of bad faith discussion as much, which I think the initial post is doing.
If you agree with them, then why did you post this?
it’s generating productive discussion
also there’s nothing really to “agree” with or not; it’s a question only and I have been doing my best not to come down with immediate judgement toward those answering the question
Gives some serious “just asking questions” vibes.
The image definitely provides a pretty clear perspective. People seem to be reacting to either agreeing or disagreeing with that perspective. Why is the main focus on those that abstained rather than on those that voted Trump? I don’t really see any productive conversations happening. Just the same people reiterating the same talking points. The data makes it clear that Gaza was not a big issue for voters, and no one is really going to change their mind on either side of that even if it WAS the deciding factor in the election. This seems like a distraction and a great way to sow division.
It isn’t a straw man, it is observation .
Well, no, because I’ve been asking myself the same question for a while now. And I don’t have that agenda. Lol
In the end you’re both still the ones committing genocide. Not the people who didn’t vote for it (not voting is a vote)
Stop trying to make this delusional talking point happen. Typical shitlib manipulation
Ps you don’t even live in a democracy…. Shitlibs did more to organize state violence against college kids protesting than they are doing to resist fascism. Thats why you fuckin lost and will always be losers and will take all of us down with you
Honestly, the election was three months ago, and we have bigger fish to fry right now. My default assumption now is that anyone still trying to relitigate the Gaza voters is a Russian troll trying to sew division among the left.
Haha no hate I just think it’s funny you arrive at the same “Russian troll” conclusion as the people trying to relitigate the Gaza voters :Pe: i think i misunderstood your comment, retracted
This push to demonize the strawman protest voters is an ongoing propaganda campaign to cause poor people to infight.
This is a real propaganda campaign
Only speculation, but I believe you are right. This only started 2 days ago after Trump’s Gaza comments. It’s disheartening how easily it is to sway online discourse. Jokes on them, this only motivates me.
It’s also possible to run thousands of parallel chatbots to atroturf sentiment these days.
They will even scour the internet automatically to insert themselves into any slightly relevant conversation
you replied to me twice. i absolutely agree with your first sentence and i believe that the second sentence is applicable to other people—it’s possible you here just misunderstood my position due to my own inclarity
Like anything, it’s probably a mix. There were plenty of actual Americans on the pro-Gaza side, and there were probably some Russian trolls as well. Now, there are some actual Americans trying to vent about the election. But it would also be naive to think a fair number of them aren’t Russian trolls. It’s not like the utility of manipulating an adversary nation’s political discourse ends after an election.
Since there’s no practical benefit to relitigating this old fight, however, it makes sense to just dismiss anyone bringing it up as a Russian bot. There’s nothing to be gained by reopening this old wound among the left, but there is plenty to lose.
Genuine question… see my third to most recent post. It’s rhetorically identical to content I posted before, during and after the election. Based on what you see there, do you think I am a paid or otherwise illegitimate troll?
I mean, people say the same thing about pro-Palestine posters. Logically, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
i don’t know what that means but thanks everyone for the downvotes i guess
Seems like this is more of a candidate problem than a voter problem - Joe and Kamala were very aggressive to anti-genocide voters and protestors - Gov Shapiro even wanted them arrested
Vote shaming will not get these voters to your side, but you know what will - candidates who will listen
Vote shaming will not get these voters to your side
This is beyond voter shaming, though. This is asking what the fuck were they thinking.
Emphatically correct based on everything I learn. I could never imagine changing my vote based on shaming and I don’t know why so many choose that tactic anyway, even after the thing is over.
This is why the aftermath of the election has been particularly frustrating to me - a LOT of comments are just shitting on Muslim voters and kind of acting happy that trump is so terrible - often ‘liberal’ voters.
What the heck? We have to keep the doors open and politicians have to get them through the doors
I suspect there’s a good portion of liberal voters who are above a certain level of wealth, and know they aren’t really affected by politics in more than superficial ways, and just sort of hate republicans for acting stupid, or, unfashionable, and see muslim voters as being unfashionable, because they failed to “fall in line”, as they explicitly state in their oft-repeated adage. Beyond that and maybe more understandably, probably a good proportion of them are people who don’t really know what they’re talking about, and are sort of, vaguely frustrated or terrified about the shit they keep seeing on CNN, or hearing about on their daily drive to work on NPR, unable to really tear themselves away from the political slop mill, where trump is kind of, notoriously good at just shoving a million things down the pipe.
I think a lot of these types can sort of be discounted out of hand, because the pipe is pushing such an overwhelming glut of content down their throats that they’ll probably never be convinced by anything you say almost ever. For every paragraph you punch out, you’re maybe gonna be counteracting like, a couple minute’s worth of propaganda, and you’re having to counteract like, eight hour’s worth of propaganda that they’re consuming on a daily basis.
I think mostly social media more broadly is engineered explicitly to facilitate this kind of like, using other people as punching bags, and venting explicitly at them, behavior. Even lemmy, which is just, designed exactly the same as reddit, but with a more open-source slant. This behavior where people use each other for rhetorical arguments rather than seeking to discuss things in good faith. More than that it’s sort of engineered to accompany the former propaganda apparatus. It’s the new media, same as the old media.
It’s also frustrating to spread the word and make sure everyone knows the consequences. And then with everyone 100% knowing the outcome, decided a fascist was the best choice. The guy who had a playbook out months in advance detailing his plans of terror and destruction. The guy that every time he opened his mouth spewed racism, Hitler praising, promises of being a dictator, conspiracy theories, and on and on. And people heard/saw that and were like, YEP!
The idea still blows my mind. And I’m not sure I’ll get to a point where I can understand why someone would sell us all out like that, and then still consider us on the same side.
in this case, i urge you to consider that it was Kamala and Biden who ‘sold us all out’, and not the voters.
it’s not easy, because people are really frustrating. but at the end of the day, if you put the blame on the people running vs the people voting - you’ll get 100% more traction with the people in the world.
i live in fucking MIssouri - it’s HARD to practice what i preach, so trust me on how difficult it is.
this is with much love to you friend, because i want us to be in a better world.
Get out of here with that both sides bullshit. If you voted for a Nazi you wanted a Nazi more than a working country, full stop. And those that did and are now somehow surprised he is doing exactly what he said he would are getting no sympathy from me, and they should be taking responsibility for the pain being waged against marginalized groups.
Removed by mod
Same experience here. It’s deeply unsettling.
Well here’s one Arab American for Trump views.
What a dope. It’s a mystery to me Why anyone would GAF about what a dope like this guy thinks
