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Get a Grip, Democrats. You Can Still Win This | Washington Monthly
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this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2024
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There are two things that will lose the election for Democrats if they don't get them under control.
If people don't stop fighting and trying to convince themselves that it's not worth it to go to the polls then this is game over.
I feel as if not enough people are saying this.
Infighting is a bane. Back when I was on Reddit I got fucking downvoted into oblivion multiple times for pointing out that the Left's biggest problem, both now and historically, is how we can never agree on anything. That whatever faults the Right has, they will come together just to shit on someone else. If us on the Left stood up in unity we would be a literal human tsunami flooding the bullshit that is the Republican habitual diatribe. Second, and louder, is apathy, as you said.
Starting to wonder if throwing League of Legends level of insults at people might get them angry enough to vote just to show me what's what.
It's because the Democratic party is a coalition. The Democratic party ISN'T LEFT. It's a party made up of moderates (right wingers) and liberals.
It's essentially two different political philosophies trying to operate within one party.
Which is why ranked choice voting allows people to better represent their candidate preferences. All the variety of political opinion can’t be represented in two parties.
First past the post got us in this mess and it sure as shit ain't gonna get us out of it. I'll take a straw poll over what our current system is.
Ranked Choice voting allows for the kind of direct democratic action as we just saw in France and what they finally got around to doing in the UK with the most recent elections.
However, it's against the best interest of the current politicians in power.
How do we get Ranked Choice on ballot when the DNC won't even use it in their primaries?
The French are also FPTP, they just convinced most of the potential spoiler candidates to fall on their swords for the good of the nation.
The politics here in the EU are just as messy, there's simply a thin veneer of ..something, class, perhaps, that trump managed to completely remove from American politics.
What happened in the UK is a genuine bright spot, though. I couldn't stand Sunak, but at least he behaved like a fucking adult when the time came.
It very much does feel like Trump gave the right permission to be their worst selves in public. The Republicans of the 90s and 00s were perfectly happy to use racism and jingoism and white grievance to win votes, but they either used dog whistles or pretended they were speaking an "uncomfortable truth". Now that it's been accepted that being horrible in public can make you president, they don't need to play that game anymore and they love it.
And all it took was that one little break. The European right is probably one successful brash racist away from being just as bad. There have been some close calls already.
You get it by coming together. The smart politicians, and the hungry ones, will back the measures if there is enough open and consistent popular support. Remember that it is about power. Political power starts and ends with numbers. Make it more valuable to some to support a change and they will become an ally.
However, this is done only through us coming together in unity, or under one or two strong leaders.
The other problem with Democrats is they have terrible fucking strategy. Then they get this bright fucking idea to take a page out of Biden's handbook. In what conceivable world was it a good idea to run an 81-year-old who all but promised to be a bridge candidate to a younger generation?
Yeah, guys, let's "rally" blindly around the guy for whom 75% of the fucking electorate find is not cognitively fit to run for a 2nd term. Real genius strategy. It's like they completely forget about low-info undecided swing voters.
It's like they ALWAYS employ the wrong strategy 2 cycles too fucking late.
Isn't it kind of the nature of the left to bicker with itself though? At some level, conservatism seeks to preserve an existing system, or at the extreme end, bring back a system recently removed. There's some room for infighting between the most and least extreme there, but for the most part, it's a goal that is easy to unite for. But the left, at it's most basic level, seeks to change things. And changing things is not a goal that inspires unity quite so well, because to change things, one needs an idea of what things should be changed to, and what you think things should be may not be what someone else thinks things should be, even if you both want change. If it so happens that what someone else wants to achieve is in your view even worse than the status quo, then you can't afford to unite with that person, because there is the risk that your efforts will further a goal you find even less tolerable than what you get by doing nothing, even though what you both want is change.
This isn't aimed specifically at you. I'm very likely guilty of this myself.
What you've said here highlights what I feel is the fundamental issue of unity for those on the left: We are all so damned certain we're the smartest in the room, to some extent anyway. We can box up and ship our opinions largely through the use of actual vocabulary. We can do real research. Many more of us have degrees, or are otherwise interested in some more academic form of hobbies, careers, and lend our strengths towards artistic approaches. Now this isn't universal and there are gigantic nodes of people who stand outside this generalization and yet still consider themselves not Republican, if not clearly left-leaning. There is at least a grain of truth for the majority.
It isn't that we bicker. We are so divided that each of the groups we belong to must, in their own way, be correct, or be offended. Just look at Biden: The majority on the Left call for equality and justice for individuals with barriers/disabilities. We yap on and on about their strengths and capacity to be incredible in so many ways. Then the instant Biden verbally fucks up we wholly ignore all the immense good he has done in favor of "Old man can't word properly!" and immediately draw lines.
What the fuck.
Yeah, that's a radical example and somewhat incorrectly used in the context of this discussion, and yet it does highlight why we get so fucked over so often. I've backed up and seen the whole forest for what it is and would really appreciate it if everyone else stopped attempting to cram their oversized heads into the nearest tree, all the while yelling about how their tree is somehow both wholly different and also the best tree. We're all in a fucking forest and Hexxus is torching the place. The problem is even those of us choosing the forest FOR the trees are at risk of being burned. All because the intelligent fools can't hear us yelling while their heads are shoved up an Ent's ass, blind in their false wisdom.
Gah, so angry.
The thing I'd like to see more of is people (outside of here) admitting they're voting for Biden even tho he's not ideal. We all know who trump is, and Biden gets a lot of flack, and I think it's going to persuade a lot of people from going out and voting.
People need to know that it's acceptable, encouraged even, to vote for the guy who isn't as bad, even if you don't like him. Just because you don't agree with everything he says or does, you agree with him more than the other guy.
Im in some groups with some trumpers, and I'll throw out memes making fun of trump, then they just say stupid incomprehensible things about Biden and I say "lol good one" and they don't know what the fuck to do
Agreed.
I don't care if its Biden, Harris, or anyone else you put up. But yall need to pick fucking somebody and stick with the pick.
I'm sticking with Biden and Harris in that order until someone gives me a better option. And after weeks following the last debate, no one has given me a seriously better option.
This choice is a problem. You have become a single issue voter. For, or against Trump. That's it. The whole system is awful but the fact they won't put anyone up who's better than Biden is disgusting
And no blame to Republicans who elected Trump?
Its fine. I'm Republican and am pissed at my own party (voted for Nikki). Its a two party system. If you don't like Trump the one to blame is the party who is putting Trump in power, sorry to say. Self flagellating over Biden is counter-productive.
If you don't demonstrate loyalty to your party, then you can't obtain political power. Its just a basic rule of politics.
Oh no, there's blame there. But you can't punish them for it. We can and should make it known to democratic leadership how impotent they've been and how badly they've been doing their jobs.
That's part of the democratic process. An important one too.
In any other situation, Id understand. Maybe not agree, but understand. But right now, and so long as Project 2025 remains a threat, the stakes are simply too high. Some of us have our lives riding on this. Im trans, Ill be dead or a homeless illegal in the event we lose.
The political system right now is simply good cop and bad cop.
Bad cop(republicans): i'll shoot you.
Good cop(Democrats): vote for me, I'm your only choice to stop him from shooting you (but it's in my best interests to let him threaten you forever, so you'll vote for me)
Both will forever suck. Both are fascists. We need better options
"Democrats must fall in love; Conservatives must fall in line."
The hand-wringing is normal: it's a characteristic, core to the democratic party but almost completely absent from the Republicans where it's replaced by loyalty.
The funny thing about the "fall in love, fall in line" bit is that the GOP obviously doesn't like Trump and would rather have a more predictable, controllable candidate, but there are too many cultists "in love" with Trump specifically for them to ditch him.
And Democrats ignore the axiom entirely and keep ordering their constituency to fall in line.
The GOP absolutely loves Trump. They say they don't like him but often parrot and amplify his talking points.
The GOP loves the votes that Trump brings in, not Trump.
I don't think there's much of a difference between the two with the flip flopping and rhetoric that has been rampant since 2016
This article from 2022 sums it up nicely
https://archive.is/KlbZW
I can dig up more direct quotes if you like, but suffice to say the GOP are all in on the Trump brand. I don't think the difference is the nuanced argument you would like it to be. Lots of high ranking Nazis in the post war era talked about how much they hated Hitler. Fascism is a self serving ideology, they love you until they have no use for you, look at how Ben Shapiro is currently floundering for a modern example.
Infighting should definitely be avoided. So they should agree on a different candidate as a unified party
The two things are the same thing. If you hadn't worked it out it's a general lack of faith in the democrats ability to accomplish anything.
They've had a whole term to do anything and what they did was a load of nothing except political grandstanding.
Whole they did that the supreme court wiped out decades of precedent and women's rights.
Their response was "go vote". But we already did that and the Dems did nothing. Their whole plan so far has been "well shit, vote harder I guess".
But there's worse.
He's ideologically toxic.
Biden is backing a genocide. Trump would too, we know that, but I don't want to vote for abyone backing a genocide.
There is no anti-genocide option, and moral grandstanding will just mean ANOTHER one at home. Surely, if youre so passionate about genocide being a bad thing, youd want to mitigate if you can when thats the only option available
If the only options are large genocide and larger genocide. I'm sorry, they don't have my vote.
Ill remember that when im sitting in conversion camp
Then remember as well that the Dems had ample opportunity to ban conversion camps and they didn't do it either.
Fam. Im not gonna blame the KPD for the holocaust, or the Tsarists for the holodomor
Unless they can arrange a new primary to replace Biden as the candidate before the convention, then the course of future history has already been set.
They could easily find a winning candidate, but will not because the party leadership would rather see Biden lose than to lose the campaign funding provided by capitalist PACs. Therefore "all is lost" is a realistic attitude.
The time to start thinking about what you'll do in a post-Democracy USA was almost 10 years ago when we were put on this path by a DNC who needed to ensure Hillary could have "Her Turn" at the presidency and sponsored Trump as they imagined him to be an easy opponent.
Those who are still in Denial, please proceed to Anger.
This is pure delusion. A rushed primary now does not in any way guarantee a win. The process will be chaotic and uncertain. The army of shitty oped writers will go to work asking "what do we really know about ____". They'll dig up innocuous shit from their past that make good headlines. After all of that the favourable a and hypothetical polls will not count for much. Acting like Biden stepping down is a sure way to win had no basis in reality.
Should he have announced he wasn't going to run a year ago ? Yes. But we're past that now.
Failing to run a primary doesn't guarantee a win either. All it guarantees is that the incumbent gets less screen time before the election.
I don't pretend to foresee specific details, but the general arc of history is as apparent as it has been for the last 8 years.
Op-eds and headlines are bullshit. Watch the DNC chairperson to see where the party is headed: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/dnc-chair-claims-biden-put-on-a-masterclass-during-error-laden-press-conference/ar-BB1pRTxA
Likewise, keeping your head in the sand and pretending that Biden could still win in November.
No we aren't, the convention isn't until September. The DNC could announce a different candidate today if they wanted, but they don't want to.
I think the DNC does, but only if Biden steps down. A hostile takeover would be pretty damaging. There's lots of insiders and major political players giving non-answers because they're not idiots, they saw the debate, they see the polling, they know he's dragging down other candidates. But under current rules, if Biden wants the nomination no one can do anything about it, so they're hedging their bets because it's very likely grandpa's ego will force them to campaign for him after all.
You're missing option: 3. Completely ignore reality and pretend Biden has a snowballs chance in hell of wining.