Democrats bet on appeals to neoconservatives — including war criminals like Dick Cheney — and touted harsh border policies, bolstering rather than challenging Republican anti-immigrant frameworks.
Kamala Harris may have relied on women to vote for abortion rights, but she promised little more than a potential return to the flawed and insufficient norm of Roe v. Wade, at best. Like President Joe Biden, she supported a genocide and failed to distinguish herself from extremist Zionists like Trump.
For Democrats, appealing to the right has been a disaster of realpolitik, especially in an electoral system that structurally favors Republicans anyway. But what’s worse, Democratic strategies have failed and harmed the most vulnerable communities both in the U.S. and those who suffer under the yoke of U.S.-backed wars.
There is an urgent need for social justice movement organizing, growing unions and union power, antagonism rather than acquiescence to existing power structures, and expansive networks of care and support. The most powerful social movements of the last decades did not primarily build on support from Democratic leadership under Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, or Joe Biden. Nor did they collapse during Trump’s first tenure.
Need more options. Ranked Choice Voting.
Ranked choice voting actually failed to pass on multiple ballot measures across the country. But yeah if all of the Stein and Oliver votes went to Harris then it would have been her victory.
We had it on the ballot here in Oregon, and it got rejected. It probably didn’t help that I didn’t see a single bit of outreach from state Dems who’ve been controlling the state for the past 40 years, but that’s probably because they’re more concerned about retaining power for the party than actually fixing things, so they didn’t want it to pass.
We tried in Oregon. The real problem is that both Democrat establishment and Republican establishment hate RCV because it diminishes their power. It may be time for progressives to separate from Dems a bit more at local and state levels. Look at Osborn in NE
RCV was also on the ballot in Colorado, but for some reason they bundled it with a “jungle primary” for governor and a bunch of other seats, where the four choices on the ballot for governor in the general election would be the top four from the ranked choice primaries, regardless of party (so you could end up with four options from the same party in theory). The latter addition was pretty unpopular with both parties, who put out tons of messaging against it and especially conflated it with RCV. It got voted down with a significant margin.
I’m not opposed to either measure, but I’m really struggling to understand why they rolled the two together into one ballot initiative instead of separating it. Alas, I’m just a lowly voter not privy to such advanced political reasoning. Fortunately most of Colorado’s other ballot initiatives went well, at least according to my preferences.
Jungle primaries are great to reduce the power of nonmajority parties. If you have a primary with 4 Democrat and 4 Republican candidates, the winners will tend to be the 4 from the majority party as all votes get split relatively even. This leaves the minority party with no candidate in the general election.
It was backed and bankrolled by some local rich fuck and “adjusted” to benefit the rich ofc. It’s good that it failed IMO, unsure what Oregon’s deal about it was though
I feel like progressives separating from Dems just gave us another Trump admin.
Some counties in Oregon use RCV or Star for some elections. It’s progress.
But I agree, nobody wants to love power on either side so there’s no support. Dems are not our saviors. Up to the people.
This is the breaking point where the Dems are going to have to collectively realize and commit to learning from their mistakes.
That Trump was successfull is an indictment of their approach that failed with Clinton and failed again with Harris. They need to invert, maybe they need to start campaigning on fear and hate (of fascism and what it does to the average person and how it sows the seeds of the nation’s destruction including gas prices and bread but also the circuses and people we all love that are no less parts of human life itself.
Maybe start getting their hands a little dirtier. This is an existential war at this point, gloves need to come off and the old guard probably needs to fuck off like forever.
They’ve been campaigning on fear. The Democratic party is not going to save you. They never were. Their empty promises are carrots they dangle to get your votes. They haven’t tried hatred yet, but I think that’s reserved for the uneducated.
Aside from the abomination that is the two party system and electoral college, the real problem is that we are trying to set the same rules across a country that is too big and too divisive to possibly work for everybody. I think it’s time for liberal bubbles to actually secede.
CA and NY make up about 21% of GDP and they contain about 18% of population. Other states are welcome to join. They’d be fine on their own and they’d have land on either coast.
That, or implement tariffs between blue and red states.
Liberals could also leave their bubbles and move to swing states.
Hyperbolic, but in actuality it’s the only way to get what you want, else half of the country is always going to be feeling how everybody on Lemmy is feeling today.
I hate to say it, because being together makes us stronger and I’d hate to need a passport to visit my friends in other states, but I think I might be with you. It’s not like we’ve ever done anything good with our united strength anyway except for stomp around the world taking resources and sparking coups (except once in WW2). Our empire needs to crumble, like England, France, Spain, and Portgual’s. It’s too big, too unwieldy, too hard to make change or improve things and get consensus from this wide area. Plus, it’s a lot easier to fight for our rights if we just need to travel a couple hundred miles to a state capital rather than across the country to Washington, DC or to convince Southern and Midwestern rural voters.
Yeah we’re such a young nation. We’re destined to experience the changes that other nations have.
The other option is to dilute swing states with an influx of liberals, but doesn’t solve the problem of half the country feeling unrepresented.
As if they’d let you secede.
Another solution would be liberals leaving their bubbles and moving to swing states.
When you say get our hands dirtier or gloves coming off, what do you mean?
They mean triggering a Civil War that will likely kill millions of people, but they aren’t going to come out and say it.
You’re never going to vote on a national level again, what use is ranked at this point?
Why not voting at national level again?
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-tells-christians-they-wont-have-vote-after-this-election-2024-07-27/
He literally said they’re going to fix the elections.
Reading a lot into that. He didn’t mean it literally and even if he did he says a lot of things he can’t promise
He also sent 84 fake electors to 7 states in 2020, I think he’s pretty serious about it.
He’s asked all sorts of people to do all sorts of terrible things, and though some stood in his way, usually tendering their resignation in doing so, I think that’s reason enough to take it very seriously. There are supporters of his who absolutely seriously suggest instating him as president permanently, and with control of every branch of government, there’s opportunity to do so.
Maybe. I think we should take his threats seriously.
Yeah he meant it.