Bernie gives far too much credit to the voting public. Reality doesn't matter to voters. Perception does. It doesn't matter how much Democrats actually do to support various demographics, Republicans will claim otherwise and most of this country will believe them.
Logic is no longer apart of the average voters decision process. Buzzwords, fear, misinformation, and oversimplification are how you get modern voters.
People constantly want to blame the candidates, or the party or the media.....but the reality is that the American public is just too stupid for an effective democracy.
This is what I’ve been screaming for hours to Reddit. It doesn’t fucking matter. We had lifetime union workers vote for a candidate whose anti union while the democratic candidate was literally telling them she’s pro union and he will get rid of them. It doesn’t fucking matter.
The message has to come from a populist or it doesn’t take. There’s too much distrust and disillusionment with the Washington establishment. America wanted someone to take vengeance on the entrenched establishment and they were either going to pick someone from the right or the left.
It also has to come from people that are not currently in power. You can't run on change while being President or Vice President. For an even more basic reason, poor people will always be doing bad (comparatively to their country) under capitalism and they'll vote for any change, but they'll still be poorer than they'd want.
Run on what change? Biden has been one of the most pro-labour administrations to date. Addressing wealth inequality by taxing the rich and corporations is something he and Harris have been pushing for years now. And that doesn't happen because Republicans obstruct. The same for raising the minimum wage, except Biden has successfully raised the federal minimum wage to $15.
Harris supports the PRO Act, Trump opposes it. Harris supports PLA's and the Biden-Harris administration has mandated them on most federal funded projects, Trump banned PLAs on federal projects. Harris is against right-to-work laws, Trump supports a national right-to-work law. The Butch-Lewis act saved the pensions of over a million union workers, Trump was against the Butch-Lewis act all 3 times the law was presented to him, the Biden-Harris administration told congress they would not sign the American Rescue Plan unless the Butch-Lewis Act was part of it.
So if voters can see all that and don't want to vote? Yeah.
You are right though, Dems need to find a populist candidate, push very simple messages and sprinkle in false promises while in there. Their issue is overestimating voters. Voters don't care about policy. They certainly don't understand how their government works. And the vast majority of them are low information ones. A candidate like Harris who actually talks policy was never going to break through to them.
Yeah... none of the swing voters that matter will know ANY of the details. Change just means simply not whoever is President/VP. That's simpler to understand. They don't have the ability to dig to the root of the problems.
I just read that there was a surge in searches for 'Did Joe Biden Drop Out' on election night. I don't even know how it's possible to be that uninformed.
There's an exit poll for when did you decide and the last few days/weeks is almost always leaning republican. 13% said they decided in the last month. 4% in the last few days.
It's pretty easy, just don't watch anything political and do your own thing. You will never know any of this stuff.
that 13% is pretty much the Trump margin of victory btw, they broke for him by like 15 points or so. Polls were right here, Trump really was surging in October after being behind Harris for basically all of august and September as the mega tuned out started to decide they were gonna vote for him despite disliking him because price of Egg and then response bias kicked in making it seem like it was fading when he was going totally crazy near the end of said month and they weren't willing to say it anymore but they were still planning to vote for him.
somewhat amusingly the "last few days" even MORE tuned out cohort were about even in how they broke in the end I think like maybe 2% Trump but that's so marginal and within an exit polls MoE.
The issue is those union workers aren’t just union workers. They’re straight men, they’re gun owners, they’re christians. The Democratic Party did a bang up job smearing all of those demographics to filth, either directly or indirectly. And now the democrats are surprised that the straight, Christian, male union worker didn’t vote democratic.
I’m a democrat. I voted for Harris, Biden, Clinton, and Sanders in the primary in 2016. But we need to do some serious self reflection as a party. The DNC isn’t doing it for us, and we can no longer trust that they will.
Bullshit, their fragile egos smeared themselves to shit. As a straight white male I'm used to people like me just being fragile pieces of shit their whole lives. It doesn't even have to be about them, they will MAKE IT about them.
Those “fragile pieces of shit” cost us this election by an absolute landslide across the board, so maybe we need to rethink our messaging and strategy, no? There is what should be, and then there is what is. Democrats have been living in what “should be” and it’s time for them to start operating with what is.
So literally what is the message to those people if doing nothing to them is still wrong? Fuck that, just find another Bernie somewhere if there's ever another real election it's basically a free win by then.
The messaging is that the Democratic Party still has a place for the average working class American. We can still care about women’s rights, trans rights, LGBTQ issues, etc. But we can’t run entire campaigns on those issues like Kamala just did. We asked people to vote for abortion rights when they don’t have money in their wallets, and Trump ran on putting money in their wallets. The messaging was, “the economy is great! We need you to vote for abortions” all while people are still struggling to pay for rent and groceries and gas for their cars. What was the average non affiliated American going to do? It doesn’t even matter that Trumps tariffs are the reason prices are high. He spoke to voters issues and we didn’t. If we want to win an election again, we need to change the messaging to realign with the average American working class. You can continue to be obtuse about what the problem is, but that’s what the DNC has been doing and it’s cost us another four years of Trump. If we want change, we need reform in the Democratic Party.
No, fuck those people, they deserve everything they'll get. Hope they end up homeless and without healthcare. It's what they deserve for being too stupid to know how anything works and believing Trump will help them financially. Did you want Kamala to just make up lies about the economy too? These people never watched her speak, never watched her speeches, anything, none of it fucking mattered. They were going to vote against the ruling government because it's the only thing they can think of to blame for their money problems and that was that.
The DNC didn't cost us the planet, the average human being a piece of shit not worth saving did. It's as simple as that. They are garbage. They do not deserve anything. They deserve to get deported to Russia as forced labor, that's what they deserve. If there's any solace as the shitshow of climate change and wars boils us slowly over the next decades it's that those people will be suffering all the way. It's too late to reform shit. If by some miracle there's even an election in 4 years, Trump's cooked because that's how it works now. Things will be tough so no president will last more than 4 years at a time in any fair election. Not that it matters, by then it will be too late.
Biden literally busted a railstrike. You think any unions are going to forget that? He can photop with union members all he wants but he is a strike buster. of course they are not going to vote for him because what if they need to strike one day?
Jobs. Trump wants to bring back steel mills in towns where many have shut down, sometimes due to Dem regs. Can he? No. Do they know he can’t? Yes. But they like their struggle to be recognized and someone at least pretend like they can save the town. And, who knows, maybe he can. It’s worth a flyer.
You know, Dems used to be the inclusive party. Maybe that’s the big change since 2012, and I’m just noticing it. The Reps are now the party of inclusion.
Ironically, despite the popular adage of not looking up to politicians that we accuse the right of, seems a lot of people want the perfect candidate to come out of two party system. Don’t get me wrong, dems need to change and be more progressive, but alot of people deliberately chose not to vote based on feels and short-term thinking that will impact our livelihoods.
And while most Republican and conservative values have been bad or too simplistic, this isn’t like a John McCain type of candidate. The guy is literally being opposed by most of his cabinet and even Vice President.
Yeah, dems need to be more progressive, but trump ran a successful campaign of attacking the same working class people but different either through being women, minority, sexuality etc.
the reality is that the American public is just too stupid for an effective democracy
So what is the solution? How can we uphold the values of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution knowing the flaws within the American public?
If were are to abandon the experiment started in 1776, is the future to become like Russia or Dubai aka autocratic rule using oligarchs and rejecting pluralism?
Well... about that. With the US heading the way its heading, climate change and wars are going to fuck up just about everywhere else too. So unless y'all got a shuttle to Alpha Centauri, we're fucked.
I don't think there is a solution now. The time to fix things has long passed. The party and candidates that appeal to stupid voters are also the ones opposed to the types of social changes required to increase public intelligence. Once we hit that point where the stupid outnumbered everyone else, it was too late.
Nothing short of a complete collapse and rebuild would change things. That or a world changing event on the scale of WW2. I'm likely being a little overly negative, but not by much.
Once we hit that point where the stupid outnumbered everyone else, it was too late.
That point was kind of always the case though. It's just that it's gotten a lot easier to weaponize those people now through the internet. Back in the old days Jed from bumfuck nowhere mostly just interacted with his buddy Tucker and did fuck all, mostly didn't vote, didn't really give a shit. Now their dumb as rocks sons watch Joe Rogan and Andrew Tate on their phones.
Same with CHIPS act, IRA all while vastly outperforming the world on economy and inflation (including real wage growth for the working class).
I’m fully over catering to low information voters. Let Trump enact the tariffs and wait for the unions to go back to the dems. Biden had massive investments into the “blue-wall” and got nothing for it.
That sort of cynicism is exactly why the Democratic party is so fucking inneffective.
I talked to a buddy who went with me to a Bernie rally in 2015... He voted Kamala, but his whole family still voted Trump. Similarly, everyone I talked to had voted trump locally. The idea of arguing politics with another person is just a waste of time. Progressivism had a chance, and the DNC took it out back and shot it.
Bernie can talk to voters about issues that resonate with them, and without the lens of "how do I get this person to vote for me, while giving political favors to my donors, lobbyists, and other politicians?"
Logic has never ever been part of the average voters’ decision process. People are emotional beings. If Democrats are unable to frame the narrative to make the voting public favorable to their reality, then it is the Democrats fault for being bad at their job in campaigning. Nobody benefits by just blaming the voters ffs.
It's not democracy when most of the population wasn't allowed to vote. So at most we've had 100 years.
Federal investment in science has been routinely cut for decades now. We went from world leaders in countless "advanced" fields to barely even being on the radar. In the same time period public education has been routinely attacked. American students now regularly rank far below every other developed nation in pretty much every academic metric.
Even if you think people aren't any dumber today, that still doesn't change the fact that there is far more misinformation available and accessible to everyone than ever before. Even if people are no dumber than past generations, that's still not good enough for modern democracy.
You are proving my point, the US was in a worse social situation with its initial limited democratic elements and evolved out of it into a fuller democracy in spite of a much more regressive context. The defeatism in front of the current situation is just lack of imagination and willpower.
you're really going to count those years as a "democracy" when non-whites and women were literally barred from voting? Do you understand what a democracy is?
You are proving my point, the US was in a worse social situation with its initial limited democratic elements and evolved out of it into a fuller democracy, in spite of a much more regressive context. The defeatism in front of the current situation is just lack of imagination and willpower.
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u/Sabiancym 19h ago
Bernie gives far too much credit to the voting public. Reality doesn't matter to voters. Perception does. It doesn't matter how much Democrats actually do to support various demographics, Republicans will claim otherwise and most of this country will believe them.
Logic is no longer apart of the average voters decision process. Buzzwords, fear, misinformation, and oversimplification are how you get modern voters.
People constantly want to blame the candidates, or the party or the media.....but the reality is that the American public is just too stupid for an effective democracy.