this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2024
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[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 120 points 5 months ago (38 children)

Heaven forbid we try running charismatic candidates like Obama and Bill...

Like, it's insane to me that everyone seems to be aware of what wins elections, but the people running the Dem party just keep insisting we need to shut up and vote for someone very few people actually want.

Like, we can't do this without the voters, they're the irreplaceable part.

We can get different people to run the party, or just coalesce around another.

[–] Clent@lemmy.world 46 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Democrats need to fall in love. Republicans just need to fall in line.

It's like you read the meme and went yep, totally their fault. I'm ok with my life gets shittier until I fall in love with a politician. It's not my fault. I am owed this.

Is there a term for the political version of an incel?

[–] Wrench@lemmy.world 50 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Yes. It's called a political agitator.

This user canvases lemmy threads with anti Biden and anti Dem strawman arguments completely out of context of the thread. Every thread calling out Republicans for bullshit, this user is there never acknowledging how terrible the GOP is, and going straight into anti dem whataboutism.

Just look at the sheer number of comments this user posts daily. And search the mod logs for deleted comments on this user.

If they're not being paid to disenfranchise progressive voters into abstaining from this election, they should look for a sponsor because they're working for free.

[–] Facebones@reddthat.com 4 points 5 months ago (5 children)

"Everyone I disagree with is an agitator, now shut the fuck up about candidates earning their votes and do as you're told because ONLY WE can save the country from fascist policies (even though Biden is doing half of it himself!)

No theres nothing fascist about that attitude or our incessant need to spread misinformation about anyone who thinks Biden sucks, SHUT UP AND FALL IN LINE OR ELSE!"

[–] Wrench@lemmy.world 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yeah ok. Plenty of people were saying the same thing while letting Hitler rise to power too. But what could we possibly learn from history?

[–] Aqarius@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago

You do, of course, realize Hitler was put into power by the conservatives, right? Like, von Pappen was Centre Party, von Hindenburg was a nationalist. They turned to Hitler to avoid losing power to the left.

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[–] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 32 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Like. lets talk about what happened.

it's reasonable to claim that Gore actually won in 2000. There were sixty one thousand votes that had not been machine-counted because of rampant, clearly partisan, bullshit reasons (among them "hanging chad",). the Florida Supreme Court ordered a manual count of those ballots with SCOTUS, lead by Scalia, decided to stay because the recount would give Bush a veneer of "illegitimacy". (gee. wonder why, ya fucking partisan hack.) To be perfectly clear, Gore lost Florida (and the electoral college) by 570 votes. The decision in Bush V. Gore to stay the manual recount basically handed Bush the win. (and, I might add, cast doubt on the legitimacy of bush's win. it was handed by a court that had no business ordering that stay. But did anyway, because they're partisan hacks. I'm not angry, honest.)

Kerry flip-flopped more than a fish out of water, making it hard for independents and centrists to know what his positions actually were. 2 years prior to the election he was, for example, staunchly against gay marriage (and lets be honest, the US was very hostile to gay marriage then. There's been a massive sea change in that, but it hadn't happened yet.), but in 2004 signed a letter urging Massachusetts to not outlaw gay marriage. Further, he had the personality of a cold fish. and his running mate was an empty suit with nothing to back it up- who couldn't even deliver his home State of North Carolina.... In short, you had a couple warm bodies running. At the time, Bush was still riding high off 9/11 and the Iraq war and americans were still angry at that; the war wasn't unpopular yet. Katrina hadn't happened yet, and Bush was still reasonably popular. So, of fucking course Kerry lost.

Hillary. Where do we begin? her emails? lets start there.

Sure, "HeR EmAiLs" and "LoCk HeR uP" is an idiotic rallying cry of MAGA morons everywhere. But, even so, she conducted official Sec of State business on a personal email routinely. It's such a great rallying cry because it actually has some teeth. it should be scandalous. Even if she was perfectly not-at-all-corrupt, it looks that way. I- and most everyone else- would be legitimately fired for conducting that level of business off a personal email. it should be 100% unacceptable. Not saying she should have been locked up or grilled the way she was. But seriously. It looked bad. and it played in the news.

Then we got Benghazi. an American ambassador died in a terrorist attack. There's some things that hindsight says they could have done differently. Republicans latched onto it for political theater, with 10 different investigations and multiple sessions of grilling Clinton, who even then was the presumptive nominee to replace Obama. there was some funding that her office denied, she might not even have been aware that "she" denied it. Hindsight's a bitch. Anyhow... the republican shenanigans played well in the media.

Oh. "Super Criminals". Hillary was very unpopular with minority voters- particularly Black and Latinos. sound clips calling for law-and-order tough-on-crime calling black people "super criminals" didn't help. there was a lot there, especially with her attitude, but in the end they simply didn't show up for her. Even if you look at women voters, she under-performed compared to Obamma. (i mean, he looks mighty fine in a tan suit... sorry, sorry. couldn't resist.) Like, how unpopular do you have to be as a woman, to lose women voters from Obama's election, when you're running against Donald- "grab them by the pussy", "When you're that rich they let you do it", "Octopus-Arms" -Trump.

Lets also talk about how she boosted trump specifically because he was "a clown" or whatever. She gave us trump and then proceededly arrogantly not campaign in key states.

oh, and there's more that I just don't have time to get into... but we got Whitewater, Travelgate, filegate; and shit rolls down hill so lets toss in Paula Jones and Monika Lewinsky scandals. Like there's a lot of smoke there, and there might be a couple fires, or maybe they're just really not that corrupt as people and it's all a big missunderstanding. but again, that plays in the media, and it looks bad. Hilary was the definition of The Establishment™️ running against an anti-establismhent candidate. Of fucking course she's gonna lose, and she really didn't help matters by fucking around with not campaigning in key swing states because, "naw, it's fucking trump".

Yup. so aside from Gore, there's really rather good reasons to have not liked them, and the DNC idiots thought they new better and ran them anyhow... and we got fucked because of it. blaming voters for your own stupid blunders seems to be a DNC favorite. And they're doing it again.

[–] ryathal@sh.itjust.works 12 points 5 months ago (4 children)

You missed basket of deplorables which is likely the exact moment she really lost.

[–] troybot@midwest.social 13 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Pokemon Go to the polls. That campaign had a death by 1000 paper cuts. Yet she still won the popular vote.

[–] Facebones@reddthat.com 8 points 5 months ago

Hell, she's STILL out here working to tank democrats in the name of status quo corporatism,

"What do you say to voters who are upset that those are the two choices? Get over yourself."

Democrats need the boogeyman of Trump but they will 1000% take Trump before they give an inch to the left, but they'll be happy to blame leftists for their loss after 4 years of telling em to eat a dick.

[–] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago

You’re right.

There’s not nearly as much as Trump but it’s still a lot, grrr

[–] lennybird@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I'm no Hillary fan, but I thought the consensus was she lost because of Comey's bullshit October surprise.

Her Basket of Deplorables remark is actually the moment she MOST energized her base and grassroots coalition. That was a blip of authenticity I and many others appreciated.

You know, the people who actually go out and do the door-knocking, phone-banking, fundraising, and pushing back against Uncle Bob and their parents while dragging their friend to the poll out of voter-enthusiasm.

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[–] lennybird@lemmy.world 24 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

Right!?

Young and charismatic. That's all that is necessary for Dems to sweep elections. Proven time and time again. With a hearty message of progress and love.

It's that fucking simple.

(signed someone who ultimately voted for Hillary and Biden but they were far from my 1st preference in the primaries).

Edit: Typo.

[–] psvrh@lemmy.ca 20 points 5 months ago (4 children)

Young and charismatic might mean higher taxes for the rich and more progressive policies.

The Democratic leadership doesn’t want that. They really like the neoliberal consensus, they like having funding parity with the Republicans. They like being seen as “very serious people “ and they’re deathly afraid of being called socialists.

The problem is that their apparatchiks all came of age, politically, in the 1990s under that same neoliberal golden age. That’s not the world they’re in anymore. They aren’t running against Bush the Elder, and cutting taxes while playing jazz isn’t going to cut it when they’re losing working class votes to fascists.

We saw this play out horribly in the UK: where Labour’s party leaders would rather sabotage their own leader because he was too progressive then risk him winning and give socialism credibility.

The political left really liked the 1990s, but it’s a bygo era and it isn’t coming back.

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[–] someguy3@lemmy.world 24 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

It's not just the president, you need to vote for house of reps and Senate. Obama only had control for 2/8 years. In that time he got the ACA. The remaining 6 years of Obama the GOP were more than happy to block everything. They even shut down the government. If you need charisma to feed your emotions every 4 years, yeesh.

*Oh I caught on, it's the thiny veiled Biden bad, hinting he has no charisma and nobody wants to vote for him. "They just have to run someone else nudge nudge. Someone else to run the party wink wink." Nuts to that, Biden is doing great.

[–] lennybird@lemmy.world 11 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I get people want to fall in line at this point and I have and will vote for Biden, but your head is deep in the sand if you believe Biden's senility and lack of charisma isn't hurting him here. The only thing we're lucky on is that Donald is running again who is for all intents just as senile and far more deranged and far less compassionate.

But Biden doesn't hold a candle to Obama.

[–] someguy3@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago (2 children)

There it is again "senility". Everyone working with him says he's sharp, but you just gotta get it in. Would I prefer younger? Sure. But he's not senile JFC. Lack of charisma? The guy presents absolutely fine and does great work. How much does one need to appeal to emotions.

[–] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 10 points 5 months ago (1 children)

How much does one need to appeal to emotions.

you haven't been paying attention, have you? the entire republican platform is an appeal to their emotions. It's why it's successful. appeals to emotion are vastly more successful than appeals to logic or reason, even if they're wrong. Our brains are literally hardwired to consider emotion before reason, to react on emotion before logic; and triggering the emotional response to manipulate people is an entire field of science in neuropsychology. (and probably one of the best funded areas of research...)

[–] someguy3@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (16 children)

This "we need someone charismatic and then we'll vote" is the emotion for the supposed logical, informed, left wing voter, who votes based on policy (or lack of policy when they protest no vote).

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[–] lennybird@lemmy.world 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (4 children)

Okay, dude — Just humor me for a second:

  • A whopping 66-77% of Americans polled again and again view Biden as too old to be President. So in this respect, I'm just reflecting a widespread concern of what millions upon millions of people see and feel.
  • His staff, who must literally kiss ass to maintain the privilege of working a job in the White House and like warfare will give no quarter to any argument the GOP makes no matter how true it is - is NOT a good counter-argument to make. It's as outlandish as the Republican senators coming out of the meeting yesterday saying Trump is sharp as ever.
  • Even the likes of The Daily Show to SNL mocks this aspect of Biden for good reason.
  • Blaming for the stutter works only insofar as you're old enough to remember Biden as VP under Obama in 2008.

NOW, here's the thing: less time needs to be spent trying to shore up the bullshit argument that Biden is "sharp as ever," and more about pivoting to Trump's incoherent rambles and his own age. Acknowledging Biden's age is actually a great one-two punch to use for anyone on the fence because it gives you a point where both can agree: "Yeah, I agree Biden is showing his age clearly. No differently than McConnell... No differently than Donald (give examples), but I think Biden is at least a more compassionate person... And say, while we're at it, can we agree we should have an age limit if we already have an age-minimum on the Presidency?"

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[–] crusa187@lemmy.ml 6 points 5 months ago

No!…it’s the voters who are wrong. Better blame theme some more, as that will surely boost our historically abysmal national voter turnout come November.

/s

[–] jaybone@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago (3 children)

I’m starting to think that the corporations (who own both parties, but prefer republicans) are sabotaging the democrats. That’s why they ran Hillary. And now we have an absolute joke of a Supreme Court that will suck every single nanoliter of jizz from the corporate dick any time day or night.

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