Summary
Following Kamala Harris’s unexpected defeat, Democratic leaders are scrutinizing their party’s failures, particularly with working-class voters.
Figures like Bernie Sanders, Chris Murphy, and Ro Khanna argue the party lacks a strong economic message, especially for those frustrated with stagnant mobility and neoliberal policies.
Sanders emphasized Democrats’ disconnect from working-class concerns, while Murphy criticized the party’s unwillingness to challenge wealthy interests.
DNC Chair Jaime Harrison announced he won’t seek re-election, leaving the party’s leadership in flux as Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries prepare to assume top roles amid a Republican resurgence.
We need an actual left party.
Tired of this fascism vs conservatives masquerading as “left vs right” bullshit.
Pelosi sucks, Bernie should be in charge of the party with AOC under his wing until he dies, it’s their only chance.
AOC doesn’t need to be under anybody’s wing.
Democrats are basically a conservative party, a depressing wet blanket to the people’s spirits, and Republicans are illegitimate, unhinged extremists.
Democrats are objectively superior in every way and they still suck ass.
Sure would be nice if there was a party that actually represented Americans instead of company profits.
Mmmmmmmmhmmmmmm. I know that’s right. Preach on!!!
I hope Schumer steps back. He’s part of the old guard that got us here, and I don’t think he should be involved in party leadership anymore. Less sure about Jeffries - but frankly, despite his obvious skills, I’m deeply sketched by his refusal to play hardball with Johnson specifically, when he threw him a lifeline to get some stuff done instead of stepping back and letting his party and the situation they and Johnson created eat themselves alive. I think that alone indicates an excellent argument for Jeffries NOT being in leadership. This is not an era for compromise and half measures that perpetuate the status quo, which he inarguably has done.
TL;DR: at this point, it’s my firm opinion that NOBODY who was involved in party leadership up to this point should be let within a country mile of leadership going forward - up to and including “fuck you, the DNC is dead, we’re making a new party”.
There’s a cognitive dissonance on Lemmy. I keep seeing people post the electorate is stupid for electing trump or staying home while also seeing posts like this acknowledging that the democratic party isn’t listening to the constituency. I realize it’s likely very different audiences but this is very much a bubble among liberals which unfortunately make up a large part of the party voting base. They were fine with everything continuing to suck a tiny bit more because the alternative was Trump. I think people are just squeezed and exhausted. They’re tired of being given the narrative that this is the election that will end all elections while things continue to get worse around the margins. And I think the people that would vote for systemic change don’t see Democrats capable of delivering on anything substantive.
Note: This is not an endorsement of Trump or not voting at all as a result. But people really need to reckon with how broken shit is before blaming voters. Democrats have no incentives to fix anything.
Both can be true. A large swath of the electorate is stupid for electing Trump, but the Democratic party failed to reach them. This is a lesson that Republicans have known for decades but Democrats still don’t get. Voter’s are not rational; being better than your opponent does not win elections. People can be annoyed at the voters for making this reality, and at the Democrats for still not getting it.
In fairness to the Dems though, the incumbent party lost ground in almost every Democracy, and Harris underperformed less in swing states where both parties campaigned.
I don’t know about “large” swath… it’s hard to tell since the media is going to focus on them and make them look larger than they are. It would be really interedting to see a poll of voters that also asked if the things trump did were fake news. Then compare how many trump voters answered yes. That might give us an approximation of the % that did so because they were just dumb enough to buy that hogwash.
Even if you wanted to make that argument, 70ish million people actively voted for Trump. He wants to remove fluoride from water. I don’t know what to tell you about those 70 million people lol.
With RFK in charge of healthcare we’ll be lucky if vaccines are legal in four years.
Right?
Like I’m not out here claiming Kamala was a particularly exciting candidate, but it’s not like this was remotely a difficult choice to make. This is absolutely reflective of a fundamentally incompetent electorate.
The Dems need to implement the Nordic Model of economic and social policies in the U.S., it’s not that hard outside of removing oversized lobbying influence on U.S. politics
They tried with the green new deal
I think the focus on “green” is distracting, and they should focus on working class woes first
Liz
Cheney
It’s the working class economy, stupid
If that was the case then the dems would have won. Biden ramped down inflation brought wages up and supported unions.
The dems lost because people love to cut their nose off to spite their face.
I’m still trying to understand why you only get to choose between two candidates. I get how it works. But so many countries elect their president in 1-2 turns.
Also also, Switzerland’s way of electing it’s executive power is much better.
Because other countries made better or updated their Democracies since the US was formed. US never got an update.
It’s about to get a firmware downgrade unfortunately
I had a friend in the Navy back around 2015 that wholeheartedly believed that this is why America would fail.
The US government is the longest, unchanged Democracy in the world. We’ve had the same documents, modified slightly but not enough, as the rule of land for almost 250 years now.
He equated it to a white board that, over 250 years, kept having stuff added to it, but nothing was “removed,” just crossed out and something written next to it, or over it.
And now 250 years later, we’ve essentially resorted to trying to fill the spaces between lines and letters and around the margins, but they’ve already been filled, so we’re just writing over what’s already written.
I’ve been spamming the shit out of this video because it is exactly the answer to that question. Ranked choice voting (or maybe a few others) are the answer.
There are organizations working to get ranked preference voting systems adopted, I donate to them. Fairvote.org is one of them. If the participation of Conservadems and GOPers with fair vote.org bothers you, there are other organizations.
They weren’t funny, or socialist enough.
Resulting in them coming off as:
Serious, and Corporatist…
…which is what they are (although the Trumps are obviously way more Corporatist).
Maybe some of those politicians should just start their own party? That’s what would happen in a healthier democracy
Yep.
At what point do we learn that voting for progress is an illusion, a fable, taught and told to us to prevent us from organizing socially to effect real change?
Yeah. Voting is retarded. Yet if anyone on the right tells you that republican democracy is a failed concept that creates a false sense of control and corruption you call them un-democratic and a nazi. But if you come to that conclusion yourself its ok.
You still haven’t figured it out yet? The middle hates echo chambers. The right and left both have echo chambers but they vote against the one that seems more disconnected from reality. By controlling speech and removing content as a knee-jerk reaction to any inconvenient information or opinion as a habit, the left have separated themselves from reality more than the right, by at least a little.
This comes off as threatening to people. Because a mob of people disconnected from reality that will simply silence anyone’s defense of themselves feels like a situation that could get out of hand. And everyone has experienced having their speech controlled. They don’t like it.
All politics is a proxy for culture war. And you lost a culture war by being controlling assholes. Watch you try to silence me right now. Just know that that habit going forward will make you lose more.
Are you stupid?
The booking banning party is that lies about covid and the weather is closer to reality than the left?
Yup. Stupid.
The left bans information too. Quite a lot. And actually they didn’t ban books. The government simply did not provide books. You just demonstrated that you are disconnected from reality right then. On every issue the left is disconnected from reality.
You’re fully delusional. The right bans books. Period. They have dumbass gullible morons combing school libraries looking for “other” content and then bitching and moaning until the library removes the books. That’s a book ban.
In my lifetime they’ve pushed to ban rap music, video games, porn, rock and roll, dungeons and dragons, mr Rogers, and mr potatoe head. Apparently you have no clue what you’re talking about.
“The left” doesn’t give a fuck what you watch or read because we’re not weird fucking losers who don’t know how anything works.
Your downvotes speak volumes
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“Kamala is part of the Biden administration, which most people, in my opinion, found to be awful.”
Define “awful”. I’ll help: you’re about to find out.
"We couldn’t grasp who she was and what policies she wanted. "
It helps a lot of if you pay attention and listen to the candidate. Maybe look up her past voting record and background.
"Essentially, the average person wouldn’t know what she wanted or who she is unless she actually did an interview on a podcast that they could watch on YouTube. "
Please tell me you are joking. That you really truly believe that because she didn’t go on a specific podcast, she lost? Like seriously people are so fucking lazy they couldn’t search “Kamala Harris interview” or “Kamala Harris policies”.
Fucking sheep.
Define “awful”. I’ll help: you’re about to find out.
And there’s your problem. You shouldn’t have to point that out, she and the Democratic party should have been talking about the economy non-fucking-stop once she had polling that said people only give two shits about the economy.
She should have been saying, yeah I know inflation sucked balls but we’re going to go after the assholes who price gouged you. She should have said, yeah, egg prices went up because of the bird flu and here’s the plan to make sure we tell these mass chicken farms to be better. She should have said, hey I know your rent is too damn high but here’s something actually realistic we can do about it. Every. God. Damn. Day. until she got inaugurated.
And as for the “Maybe look up her past voting record and background”, well guess what? They don’t and we know they don’t because we have a lot of social science research showing that when you’re lower working class, when you’re done working two - three jobs or a 12 hour physically demanding job trying to make ends meet, tired out of your god damn skull, and you can’t afford to pay your rent or food or internet that you need to actually get another job because the one you have is still laying you off. Yeah, you got that 17% raise that the rank and file got over the four years but to you that basically amounts to another 2 bucks an hour meanwhile you rent’s gone up 500% in four years.
I’ve been there, I’ve done that, I’m not looking shit up after running a double shift dealing with asshole customers complaining about how prices are too high and some white dude spouting off racist bullshit to my face. I’m not that now and I have a job where I can post on Lemmy in the middle of the day and have that luxury of being able do that research. Most American’s don’t have that mental bandwidth to do that and one as I put up above is going to give two shits about the BLS report saying that wage growth was the highest in decades when they’re literally struggling.
Democrats are often derided for being elite and honestly there’s truth to that, Democrats, especially the people in leadership really fucking suck at actually talking to people and really suck at empathy and they have to realize that, I’m sorry but the American public isn’t the brightest, they don’t have the greatest attention span, they’re tired and just want someone to tell them they’re going to be able to eat and have a roof over their heads and not have to struggle so damn much and someone’s actually got their back. Even if it’s pretty little lies.
She should have been saying, yeah I know inflation sucked balls but we’re going to go after the assholes who price gouged you.
Funnily enough, she did!
But ok, you keep on ranting. Good rant!
Damn, you’re right, she did mention that in one single interview and I had forgotten until you mentioned it.
And that’s from someone the regularly follows politics and reads the paper everyday. Now imagine the guys I’m talking about above, what make you think they’re going to actively go out and seek that info and retain it. Again Every. God. Damn. Day. until inauguration.
All I can see is that this is why Democrats are going to keep losing because instead of coming down to talk to the people and not over them and dismissing with reports and numbers and can’t accept the fact that they have a lot of blame along with these low info voters who also have a lot to be desired. Unable to adapt to the changing landscape of how people consume news and information too. But hey, never learn Democrats, never learn.
All I can see is that this is why Democrats are going to keep losing because instead of coming down to talk to the people and not over them and dismissing with reports and numbers and can’t accept the fact that they have a lot of blame along with these low info voters who also have a lot to be desired.
I agree with the sentiment, at least in principle. Democrats need to reject neo-liberal (or is it really neo-con?) policies and start meeting regular working people where they are at. To my mind both AOC and Sanders have articulated this extremely well.
But… this is a two-way street. A lot of voters are low-information because they simply don’t prioritize voting and elections. There may be decent reasons for this but not voting or just voting for whoever says things that make you feel good in the moment is not taking responsibility as a citizen and it certainly isn’t voting for your own interests. Things don’t get better that way. We need to fight.
I know I know… chicken meet egg.
I guess that’s where we differ in opinion. I honestly don’t see it as a chicken/egg situation, I 100% put the communication issue on the leadership.
When I lead a team, it’s incumbent upon me to ensure communication is flowing and that my team understands what I am providing and asking for from them. Success is ours, failures are mostly mine.
That’s how I see this situation at least.
Interesting.
I 100% put the communication issue on the leadership.
The difference is that when you lead a team your team does not elect you. You are in a position of power and accountable for their failures.
Our representatives are not our leaders, they are elected by us to represent our interests. Very different power dynamic and the distinction, at least ot me, is critical. We have to make informed choices about who they are and if they will adequately act on our behalf. In order to do that we need to put effort into understanding them, their background, and their choices. It’s a bit like when you choose to purchase something or even, say, commit to living in a particular city. It’s not up to the city to adequately communicate to you why you should live there, although that certainly doesn’t hurt. It’s mainly up to you to establish whether that place is right for you.
Damn, you’re right, she did mention that in one single interview and I had forgotten until you mentioned it.
And yet, if it were an important issue to you, important enough that your vote hinged on it, I’m quite sure you and every other voter could head to google and go “Kamala Harris price gouging” to find out.
The argument is basically “Yes she was doing what I wanted but she didn’t tell me personally so I voted for the other guy.”
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Okay, you’re full of compete shit then.
Literally type in Harris policies and you get Harris’s website on the issues, BBC “what are Harris and Trump’s policy”, CBS “Kamala Harris’ policy plans and platform on key issues for the 2024 election”, and so on.
If you’re going to lie, don’t lie about something so easily disproven and being proud that you’ve admitted you’ve got time to look shit up and still be a low info voter. That’s just pathetic.
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deported.
What? That made no sense at all. Was that supposed to be some kind of incoherent threat?
I couldn’t find any podcast with her, so I barely knew who she actually was.
LOL. I can see how this might be a problem for you. Do you make major life decisions this way too?
“I couldn’t find a podcast detailing the make and model of car I was interested in, so I really couldn’t make a decision and decided I would just have to stay home. I was PARALYZED I tell you!”
“I was trying to decide between two job offers but no podcast was available so I just stayed unemployed”
People type in “Kamala Harris policies”, yet, you could barely find anything
You mean like the very first result here: https://kamalaharris.com/issues/
I grant, it requires you actually READ. How troubling.
If he’s in a right wing echo chamber, it’s possible that he just see the right wing stuff on Kamala Harris first and has to go down to find the official website
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Losing didn’t reveal anything wrong with the DNC. The problem is with Americans. It’s going to be up to everyday people to reprogram those in the cult. You can’t do that systemically. You have to do it on a personal level. And it takes a lot of time, energy, and compassion. Only then can the underclass have the unity needed to for positive change.
Losing didn’t reveal anything wrong with the DNC. The problem is with Americans.
Behold, centrism.
The DNC is a centrist party. The people are the power, not the parties.
Apparently, everyday people can’t be trusted to wipe their own ass.
You can’t deprogram these people. They love their racism and authority figures. It’s a lost cause. As Carl Sagan once said, there’s a “celebration of ignorance” in the US.
