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.
Biden spent four years massively pro-union, the Inflation Reduction Act was massive and not marginal with the job creation all over, and his administration remembered that the Sherman and Clayton Acts exist and used them. They have been everything a good leftist could want.
We live in a post-truth world, and the massive media oligarchy is in full effect, driven by the editorial desires of the hyper-rich. Dems could run Jesus and lose, at this point.
America should get rid of that two party nonsense and start forming a proper government.
Those founding fathers would be ashamed.
Those founding fathers discovered they had a two party system immediately and did nothing to prevent it from being cemented in place.
DNC:
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?
“The DNC hears ya. The DNC don’t care.”
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
People going around claiming the Democrats are neoliberal immediately after they leaned super hard into unions is some serious gaslighting horseapples.
Pfft. This is a dumb interpretation. They just want clear leadership that is outspoken. Kamala is too composed and not owning the conservatives enough.
As much as I like the high road, she didn’t tip any new voters in her direction.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
If the electorate consisted of 9 people who were doing fine, and one person that wasn’t, we would have 9 no votes and one person that voted to destroy the system that allowed the 9 to be doing fine.
Sadly this is true, but that’s the price for not participating in democracy
Democrats: “Understood. We must try harder to win over the 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.
“center right”:
Honestly, we should have seen it coming with all the “nostalgia” for the Good Old Days of GWB.
Clinton is the last era before the shit hit the fan.
Enron, 9.11, the mideast war series, 2008, etc.
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.
This was literally what the Harris campaign walked away saying.
Democrats:
“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!
Honestly it’s more possible…
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
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?
Yeah! People need to go back to trusting good ol cable news! They’ve never steered us wrong
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.
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.
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.
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.
”and shrug off
right wingpropaganda" FTFYYeah fair enough.
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.
