Summary
Historians suggest Democrats might have fared better against Donald Trump by embracing the economic issues championed by Senator Bernie Sanders, who has long pushed for a focus on “bread-and-butter” concerns for working-class voters.
Despite Kamala Harris’s progressive policies, polls showed Trump was favored on economic issues, particularly among working-class and Hispanic voters.
Historian Leah Wright Rigueur argued that Sanders’ messaging on economic struggles could be key for future Democratic strategies.
Sanders himself criticized the party for “abandoning” the working class, which he said has led to a loss of support across racial lines.
The more Dems and Progressives think and sound like Bernie, the better.
Democrats should have listened to Bernie Sanders, Captain Obvious says.
If Democrats could hear criticism, they’d be very upset.
Criticism is just a 9 letter word for “Russian asset” to Democrats in 2024.
Could have had a bad bitch.
I usually vote along with the democrats, but neoliberals are so freaking elitist and clueless. As much as it pisses me off that I’m going to have to deal with whatever fascist bs Trump has in store, it’s really quite nice seeing them get their asses handed to them by a populist… It’s just too bad it wasn’t a left-wing populist.
I vote for Democrats because I kinda half to, not because I want to.
I wanted to vote for Sanders. I voted for Biden and Harris.
That’s the real problem with historians. They always talk about the past and not the future.
If democrats were capable of listening we wouldnt have two terms of donald trump.
Not even a single term
Hell, if the US could finally get rid of this first past the pole, winner takes all system, the democratic and Republican parties wouldn’t even exist anymore, they’d both be replaced by better parties
More voters should have listened to Bernie.
He told people what to do.
Yes, but people forgot that his real message was to get out there an be the change. Bernie’s message was never about relying on or believing in the Democrats, it was that change only happens when we mobilize.
He told us to get out there and run ourselves and get personally involved and invested in our local politics so we can be the revolution… We just chose not to listen to him.
People talk about “the Dems” like they are a monolith.
AOC unseated a long term Congress member who was tightly connected to the New York power structure. She did it by hitting the streets and talking to the locals. She built up voter support and won her primary.
I know it’s an uphill battle, but it is possible to change things.
Yes, this is what I’m saying. I’m not saying take up pitchforks and bring the fight to the democrats like they’re the villain, I’m just saying not to blindly trust them either. They are a part of the system; even if not in permanent institution certainly in effect. Bernie didn’t say go fight the Dems, in fact he proved that you can strategically use them. But don’t think that D = good or D = hero automatically either.
It’s not about fighting the dems, it’s about trusting in ourselves instead of others. It’s about autonomy and the fact that nobody is going to fight the fight for you, you’ve gotta get your knuckles dirty. Don’t trust anyone to do the work for you, red or blue; get out and do the fucking work yourself.
He told everyone to vote for Dems, instead of make a legitimate opposition to the right
God i’ll never forget where i was when he dropped out. I had phone banked and donated and I was watching his concession speech just…wrecked maaan, wrecked at how the DNC et al had ratfucked him and how tilted the game was… and while I’m saltin my booze with tears someone in the group asks him “What do we do now?” and he says something like
“Vote Dem, vote in your primaries”
and my heart fell in that shitty whiskey with the rest. Maaaan, i never knew i still had faith to lose until that moment.
Haha, I feel similar, I was really mad for a while that he just gave in, but at the same time, I think he did what he thought was best for the country at the time, Trump was and will be terrible for the country, and if the DNC was going to fuck over Bernie and he thought he couldn’t possibly win third party and if he DID fight that fight, Trump would assuredly have won.
Of course in hindsight, he won anyway so it would have been better to take the fight to the DNC then.
Then did nothing but carry water for them for the last 4 years.
It is not the voters job to embrace a progressive modern platform nor is it their job to get themselves energized over said policies
But both parties have shoved that false belief down voters throats that is the voters’ faults when they fail to deliver
In a democracy, it sure as Hell is the voters’ job to do all that. And more, for that matter.
In fact, the voters should be controlling the parties (if not abolishing them entirely), not the other way around!
No no no, the Democratic Party is some magical uncontrollable entity, we must abandon it, making progressive change infinitely more difficult.
/s if it wasn’t obvious. Banana is a bad faith agitator. They desired a GOP victory.
Not sure exactly the point you’re trying to make, but you’re half right. It is a politicians job to convince voters to support their policies, that’s true, but it’s also equally true that voters should support good policies. While it’s not their “job” to do so, they still suffer the consequences for failing to do so all the same. No matter how you slice it, people were stupid to not listen to Bernie all this time.
It was the DNC’s job to be clear about Bernie’s message. I voted for him in the 2016 primary even though I was bombarded with “radical socialist regressive left” Bernie articles in my social media feeds at the time.
Unfortunately, most Americans don’t actively seek out information and just accept the picture painted by the news that’s fed to them.
It was the DNC’s job to be clear about Bernie’s message.
LOL the DNC has actively fought against Bernie’s message.
Enjoy having Trump. I really don’t have any more words for people like you.
You lot gave everyone Trump by refusing to listen to voters concerns.
You apparently have still not learnt.
Lol I actually voted and voted for Harris. FWIW I’m also a former Republican who voted for Trump in ‘16.
If I’m able to fucking learn then so will all these morons who stayed home and didn’t vote because of either their apathy or “principles”.
Those people gave Trump the path to the White House again.
Lol I actually voted and voted for Harris. FWIW I’m also a former Republican who voted for Trump in ‘16.
Oh look, it’s the only voter Harris cared about.
Why does it matter if Harris cared about my vote? I did my job. Did you?
Why does it matter if Harris cared about my vote?
Because seeking votes is what campaigning is.
I did my job. Did you?
I voted for Harris. Harris didn’t do hers. She ran to the right and alienated the left.
Me and others like me warned what would happen as a result, and it was interpreted in all cases as trump support. Got called Russians so often that c/politics eventually made a rule forbidding it. Centrists thought they knew better. Thought that genocide had popular support. Thought that Dick Cheney’s endorsement was a win. No one likes Dick Cheney. Even Republicans hated him before the endorsement. The constant abuse aimed at Muslim voters left Trump an in-road that he exploited. Pretending that the economy was fine and that everything was better now, after all the inflation that it sure as fuck looked like the Biden administration just sat back and watched.
Not to mention the very public failures of the Biden administration on labor: Failing to pass BBB, killing the minimum wage increase, and breaking the rail strike. The Biden administration earned the distrust of workers, and it doesn’t matter how fair you think that is. Harris didn’t do a damned thing to differentiate herself from him on this issue. More of the same was untenable, worse was the only alternative, so people stayed home because they weren’t being represented by either party, and one was insulting them and telling them that they weren’t struggling because the economy was working fine for billionaires.
Hell, the only daylight between Harris and Biden was when she moved to his right. Promising to appoint a Republican to her Cabinet. Campaigning with Liz Cheney. Even Biden wasn’t that tonedeaf.
We warned you. We kept warning you because we knew what was at stake. You were all so fucking pigheaded that you refused to listen.
I’ve been saying that since the DNC fucked him over in the 2016 election. I voted for Biden, then Harris, but I never fucking forgot who’s to blame for the state of things now.
Berine had the biggest grassroots campaign I’ve seen in my time alive, bigger than Obama, more individual donations than any candidate ever.
But the DNC knew if they ran a real progressive it would threaten their corrupt racket
Ive always liked Bernie. Bernie demonstrates the Democratic party would much rather lose with Kamala than win with Bernie. Never thought I would see them campaigning with Dik Cheney, the mask fell away for a few moments on that one.
I legit could not believe they accepted that endorsement at all, much less ran with it as hard as they did.
No shit.
If we had run Bernie in 2016, Trump would still be nothing but a punchline.
Yes, because Trump’s second term would now be over.
Clinton lost. Sanders couldn’t possibly do worse than her lmao
Lol at this delusional lib rewriting history that somehow Clinton won over trump 😂
It’s one think to think that Sanders is correct, but to think that the American people would have voted for him in 2016 is just extremely delusional.
In 2016 Sanders was 10 point above trump
Here’s a map of donations for the 2020 primary, you make of that what you will.
Okay, maybe he would have alienated like a small percentage of liberals that thought he was “too radical” and he will bring a holodomor on the US for some reason. Maybe some of those Bernie bros were just troll pretending to like him, so they could play the “why I left the left”. Still, he not only could have won a lot of Republicans, but even more people who normally abstaining from voting.
I don’t really know how the Democratic Party is expected to steer out of the center-right ditch, though. With all the dark money calling the shots, I mean. Bernie is the exception that proves the rule.
The electorate is actually far more progressive on the issues than the corporate media lets on. But the minute the Democratic Party were to embrace Bernie-style positions? You can bet that not only the “liberal media” would declare this sO vErY eXtReMe, but all the big money would be spending against them, and spending against them hard. Think it’s bad now where crypto, Elon, and the Washington Post are tilting against the Democrats? Imagine they actually embraced progressives…
Not saying I love it, I just don’t know what the answer is.
Bernie isn’t the exception that proves the rule:
He’s not a fucking Democrat.
The thing is, we’ve seen what the working class wants: Not concrete policy that will help them, but to have their feelings of struggle, outrage, and anger acknowledged and reflected back to them.
The Democrats could have radical pro-worker, pro-working-class reforms in their policy platform, but if what they’re broadcasting is “things are great” energy, or “there are bigger fish to fry” energy, then they’re going to get ignored.
The Democrat’s talking points have focused on the health of American institutions. That’s the thing they’ve repeatedly signalled is most important to them.
It’s not what’s most important to most households. It’s actually pretty far removed from the top of their lists of concerns.
At this point maybe the democrats just need to embrace these hard positions and normalize them. The gop doesn’t appear to care how radical their stances are and they get votes regardless of the racism. Trump’s whole shtick has been normalizing bad behavior and gaslighting the other party into thinking any wrong they do is a gotcha- they’re operating on two very different rulesets.
In hindsight it seems obvious, but to be honest I really thought Kamala would have fared better.
To me the main takeaway is that I live in a completely separate reality from most voters. I would have voted on a dead dog over Trump. He is mean, narcissistic and never shows any empathy. On top of that he is clearly losing his wits. If a majority of voters prefers a candidate like this, is even enthusiastic to vote for him, what can you do?
I also know that Lemmy skews left, but I think we have to face the fact that most voters have no ability to empathise with those worse off. There is no left wing politics without empathy and solidarity. What most of us here want is dead.
I think social media has put everyone in their own eco chamber.
This is true to an extent. Social media made it much easier to spread misinformation that allowed for the total shattering of consensus reality. Which had been under intense duress for the better part of a century anyways
We all did, you’re not wrong.
It’s a sad reality we all woke up to on Wednesday. Learning that the majority of Americans are ignorant, racist, misogynistic, selfish assholes.
When you mean “all”, I wonder who you group in that conception.
Not all of us believed Kamala would win. A good group of people were calling out Kamala’s shit since the DNC, and everything since. With the direction of the campaign, you had a good chance to predict Kamala’s underperformance.
Let’s not kid ourselves here.
We all did
No, we did not “all” think so, a lot of us have been saying this for quite a while. In fact since at least the 2016 election cycle started in 2015.
This is what many said in 2016 after Clinton lost but we still did it again in 2020 and yet again in 2024. If I were a betting man I’d say that if there’s sill an election worth having in 2028 we’ll see another, even further right leaning, centrist Democrat win the nomination.
Yoyo look, this guy’s fucking nostradamus up in here, right? It’s gonna happen just like this.
I’m thinking newsome is the “perfect” candidate for 28.
Whoever it is, I bet you, just like me can’t wait to be told how stupid i am and actually great they are by credulous online political minds who call parroting the pundits talking points word-for-word fucking theory
It was also copium. After the infamous debate we all knew Biden wouldn’t win and had made a mistake.
The fact that he actually backed down just gave a lot of enthusiasm to what could come next. It was historic and made us all stop focusing on the fact that he should have never ran for 2024 in the first place.
The fact that he actually backed down just gave a lot of enthusiasm to what could come next.
The fact that the party listened just fucking once was what generated the enthusiasm. That died when it became crystal clear that no further listening would happen.
You guys need to think of the DNC as more of a for profit business.
From that perspective, they were super successful in making so much money.
Remember, there can be more money made when you intentionally lose, similar to butch in pulp fiction.
Remember, the DNC admitted in court that they are an unaccountable private corporation
Every single text i got had donate in the first sentence. The DNC had a very singular message this cycle and it was donate. It shows the flaws in the system and it shows the flaws in the party. Until i start seeing serious conversations about serious fuckin issues like repealing Citizens United, universal healthcare and proper privacy laws I can no longer consider the DNC a serious organization.
https://www.cnn.com/politics/elections/presidential-candidates-money-raised-dg
Harris had the most money for her run and still begged for money from the people who were being hurt by no minimum wage, affordable healthcare, living paycheck to paycheck.
The RNC had more funding than the DNC, not sure if that’s common or unique this one. While I didn’t get any texts for “send money to Trump” texts, that might be because I’ve used my phone for aiding Democrats in office so they probably saw it as a waste of money.
And just to clarify, gender identity, abortion rights, reproductive rights all fall into privacy for me. It’s only my business.
And it should be, those harm no one but yourself, and it shouldn’t even be harmful then. What someone identifies, had an abortion, who they love, shouldn’t impact me or anyone else.
Republicans demand that since they find it immoral, we should have it impact to the general public. The right to privacy being implied but never codified in America is such a massive blow to the rights of citizens.
