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this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2025
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Primary his ass.
Actually, everyone who says they're democrats and approves a trump nominee for anything should get their ass fucking primaried. and primaried hard. and the DNC should give their primary opponents all the help.
2015 flashbacks, Frustrated Bernie Sanders face, smiling Hillary Clinton face...
Yes. Yes they should.
Sigh
I often think what the world would be like if people accepted that Bernie didn’t win the primary and went out to vote for Clinton.
We’d probably have the majority in the Supreme Court so Roe v Wade would still be law but instead we have this.
This is bullshit.
More Clinton voters voted for McCain over Obama than Bernie voters voted for Trump
They even had their own PAC
I didn’t talk about Bernie voters voting for Trump I was talking about democrats sitting out the vote just like they did for Harris.
You can tell from the smaller number of voters who turned out.
Maybe it's because the Democrats ran a shitty campaign, like they did for Harris.
As evidence: There was no contested primary in 2024, so there wasn't a bunch of butthurt Bernie Bros sitting at home.
Maybe it’s because Harris and Clinton don’t have dicks.
That certainly didn't help things, sadly
America is fucked up deep in its core and is beyond saving
college educated males was the only demographic where harris gained votes over biden, and that was just a1% gain. But looking at literally every other demoraphic, inclduing ever female demographic, its hard to conclude that Harris lost becase she was a woman.
I see a pattern here. Woman doesn’t get elected => they ran a shitty campaign
Counterpoint: Kerry and Gore
My point is that considering how complicated the situation was where incumbent parties were massacred globally, Harris didn't run a shitty campaign. She made some bold decisions that didn't pan out. For example, she attempted to bridge the rural vs. urban divide by picking Walz, something that is quite ubiquitous to other modern authoritarian systems such as Türkiye or Hungary. What I would conclude is, rural votes are forever lost to the far right, and trying to appeal to rural voters will not be a viable future approach. Simply saying she did a shit job is not very constructive, and frankly quite unfair.
She also did nothing to energize her base and campaigned with Cheney. Why would someone who protested the Iraq War be enthusiastic about that?
Heck, the one bit of traction they got - calling Trump weird - was stopped because of their consultants.
She did basically have to start from scratch in the middle of a campaign, which was a handicap.
And I also disagree with your rural/urban divide theory. There’s plenty of hippies and anarchists in the boonies. They’re just not gonna turn out for someone reaching across the aisle to their annoying redneck neighbors.
Well, that's my point.
Then the solution isn’t to frame it as rural vs urban, but left vs right.
Republicans will never turn out to vote for a democrat no matter how bad their candidate is. Reaching out to them, wherever they live, is a waste of time.
I'd say the distinction is justified by the very quantifiable and objective data to support it from many countries and elections. It's also by design, as rural people's emotions will be much better controlled by xenophobia in its most literal sense. Also rural people have much smaller networks and thus much more controllable information consumption. This is what right wing conservatives have been banking on.
I entirely agree with this, but it's also hindsight is 20/20. I don't think it was an insane idea to run on the idea of cooperation and consistency vs. the chaos of trumpism to convince the "normal conservatives". Harris' campaign was highly risk-averse, but again the theme was consistent, vote for us and we won't fuck shit up like trump would. What the past two general elections showed is that anger appears to be the primary winning force. GOP strategy pounding on grocery pricing was the perfect method, people pay for groceries multiple times a week, so you can remind them how angry they are every time even when Americans' primary issue (relative to other western nations) are housing and healthcare and the lack of social safety net, whereas Americans have bad diets but don't starve.
That said if we keep anger to be the driver of elections, it's only a matter of time to end up with a civil war.
I guess the question is whether the Democrats want 5% of the rural vote or 0% of it. Having lived in Trump country there are a lot more lefties than people think, and they’re even more annoyed at their redneck neighbors than city folk. So if a campaign is saying they’ll reach across the aisle it will turn them off.
I also don’t think it’s hindsight. Lots of people online thought it was a bad idea. Republicans have been vilifying anyone not them for 30+ years.
And at this point I think a civil war is the only way to resolve things. Nation states will not survive the invention of the internet.
Many people said many many things, so by the rule of large numbers, someone's prediction will pan out but it doesn't necessarily mean they have a superior grasp of the underlying causes or that their next predictions will be correct again.
I suspect you are correct about the eventuality of a civil war, but I do hope the revolution can be pulled off without bloodshed. Like through migration to decentralized networks.
Yeah, the best outcome would be society rebuilding around the nation-states, causing it to wither away from lack of attention and real power. Kinda like how lots of countries still have hereditary monarchies that are purely ceremonial.
some states have recall elections
IMO every state, city, municipality, township, HOA etc should be required to have recall elections.
If a supermajority of people feel they are no longer represented by the current representative, then that should be enough to recall them. 3/4 of electorate signs a petition which gets verified, immediate recall election. Why should we always have to wait for the NEXT election.
It should also be automatic if a person changes party affiliation
Absolutely along with having to be reassigned committee roles
Good luck getting 3/4 of any group of people to agree on anything. Even 2/3 would be a hard target to hit.
Thats a good thing though. It would keep it from being abused by a minority who are just grump maga bitch types. You would need a REAL consensus to recall someone should it be needed.
Right, it would prevent abuse, but it probably would prevent legitimate action as well since even the world's biggest asshole can get at least 25% of people to side with him.
Hear hear
Pelosi should be recalled.
You’re right, but historically anytime someone primaries a Dem from the left the DNC will look to bury the challenger in favor of keeping the establishment figure in office. Sometimes we get an AOC, but usually it’s a Cuellar.
Only vaguely conscious of this guy from my nice safe seat abroad but IIRC he wasn't exactly "establishment" in the first place? He can't have that many friendly colleagues after basically completely changing his policies once in office. Never mind the reputed reason for that happening.
Well my comment was about how Pelosi helped defeat the progressive Jessica Cisneros in TX, by giving tons of DNC money to Henry Cuellar, a corporate shill. Both dems, but the DNC tipped the scales in favor of the neoliberal, to the detriment of democracy. All too often this is what happens in primaries where there is a challenger from the left. No worries though, that isn’t a race I would expect those from abroad to know anything about, just using it as an example.
The guy you’re talking about, Fetterman - actually I think he has been making moves to become more establishment, and has likely gained allies as a result. AIPAC is the Israeli lobby group that buys all of our politicians so that our government does whatever they want - I don’t think they even needed to give Fetterman any money though, he seems like a rabid Zionist from the start. This attitude signaled his departure from progressive politics - we saw the exact same thing with Kyrsten Sinema, who got into office as a “progressive leftist” but then immediately went mask-off right wing. Establishment/centrist politicians love people like Fetterman and Sinema because they can be used to kill any legislation that is “in danger” of passing, when it might result in things like higher taxes on the rich and corporations, or more stringent regulations to protect people that might cost businesses some money. This is a key factor regarding how corporations and other private interests have captured our government, such that we presently live in a corporate oligarchy.
I think everyone should have been suspicious when party leadership didn't sabotage his campaign.
I’d primary him but I have no money, no political experience, and don’t want the job.
You already sound like a better choice than Fetterman!
You have 4 years to get the money and change your mind.
If I could get millions of dollars that quickly I’d buy a huge spread of land and divorce myself from society
Can't be any worse than him
Marco Rubio’s confirmation was unanimous so uh…guess we’re primarying all of Congress, lol
GRANTED
Andy fucking Kim, I'm looking at you. Fucking disappointment.
Wait... what did Andy Kim do?
Pennsylvania moved far to the right in 2024. He’s probably just trying to keep his job. Primary him with an liberal and we’ll end up with a republican in PA. Same thing happened with Joe Manchin.
He's the new manchin, all right. Right down to the same excuses for keeping him around.
Pennsylvania Democrats stayed home because the democrat they voted for betrayed them. Betraying them even harder is the only thing centrists are ever willing to do.
This is nothing like Joe Manchin. He was literally the only Democrat who could get elected to national office in this state. It was absolutely inevitable that he would be replaced by a Republican. West Virginia voted for Trump by a higher margin than any other state.
Take it from someone who lives in the capital. We have a Democrat for mayor, but that's the extent of Democrat possibilities in this state. Only in our small cities for state or more local positions do they stand a chance.
The cities here are pretty decent. I love my state, but the people have forgotten our roots. From breaking with Virginia to side with the Union in the civil war, to some of the bloodiest labor rights battles in American history, by all rights this should be a left leaning state. The Southern Strategy was very effective for Republicans, and nowhere is that success more evident than West Virginia.
Pennsylvania is a completely different animal.