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.
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
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.
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Democrats should have listened to Bernie Sanders, Captain Obvious says.
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.
Here’s a map of donations for the 2020 primary, you make of that what you will.
Every trump voter I know would of went for him. Explain how counties that twice went to Obama in a landslide magically flipped to trump in a landslide. You won’t.
In 2016 Sanders was 10 point above trump
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Remember, the DNC admitted in court that they are an unaccountable private corporation
No shit.
It is absolutely clear now. The DNC is a private company whose main function is to fund raise, period. If they also win an election then that’s great, but if it comes to a choice between winning and raising money, they will choose raising money. They will never move to the left to win voters if it will cost them fund raising opportunities from the center and right.
This honestly makes so much more sense than anything else. I think you nailed it. Republicans are motivated by money and exerting social control so they write up manifestos (p2025), take over the courts, work hard to disenfranchise voters, lie, cheat, anything is on the table. The DNC does indeed seem fairly comfortable with losing by comparison, despite the fact that the leftist ideals they supposedly dabble in create a moral imperative to never lose. I wonder if Republicans fucking pay the DNC money to run these candidates we all know aren’t the best. They’re just good enough to get votes against mother fucking Trump. But not always good enough to win, barely good enough when they are, typically.
Republicans don’t need to pay the DNC, both are funded by the same billionaires most of the time.
“Nah guys, we’re good on money, thanks. Got enough.”
The democrats represent the group of americans that think money and “american ingenuity” can solve all problems. No problem is a real problem because we can always solve it if we just try real hard to make the current thing better.
Thats why they are the status quo party, its literally their whole founding belief.
The republicans are a party of changing backwards, which only works sometimes, usually when people are upset: “remember when things weren’t awful…?”
The rest of the parties are thinking long term and are true parties of change but you need money to make it in politics, or else not enough people even know you exist at the higher political levels. There were I think five “third” parties on my ballot but I only ever heard people talk about one or two of them.
I’m not sure if its more likely the democrat party collapses out of disinterest and a third party replaces them, or if the democrat party will become a true party of change for the future.
It could just continue on as the party of “America is amazing and will always be amazing so vote for us for more amazing.”
And the rich.
It’s downright sad that I can’t think of any argument against this.
That never stopped you before. Just scream that they’re a trumper like you did when you were wrong about genocide and didn’t want to admit it.
Imo, you’ve got all the prices. However, I would put them in a different order.
Short answer: Republican or Democrat, the candidate that spends the most wins. Therefore, fund raising is winning.
There’s a small group of king-makers in the US and the candidate who offers them the most becomes president. Recently, the people who decide who gets to be president has started to include social media companies and amazon, who hosts half the Internet. Trump also cozied up to the American owner of the company the owns tiktok. Thats how he won. Trumps also great for social media engagement and news channel views.
Even candidates who happen to be better than the republican candidate, no democratic hopeful worth being of “the left” will ever be given enough money to become the president of America. Even if they started from a position that would appeal to them, they would have to compromise on everything that made them that in order to be allowed anywhere near the Whitehouse by the American ultra wealthy.
What you’re seeing isn’t the failure of the Democrats to correctly triangulate but the strength of the American ultra wealthy consent manufacturing machine.
I don’t disagree those factors are at play, but they’re not as important as you seem to think in this day and age.
Bernie had real grassroots support and the dems stomped it out. The key is populist rhetoric and speaking about change, the DNC has basically been running on “not Trump” and “well things are bad but they would be worse under Trump.” while that is true, that’s not a winning message, give people something real to fight for and you’ll win support.
On the contrary, they’re more important now than they’ve ever been. There also hasn’t been an election where the highest spender didn’t win. Its THE determining factor.
The same people who fund presidential campaigns for Republicans also spend lots of money on influencing democratic nominee choices. The whole things been captured.
Its like you all can’t see the woods for the trees, in the politest way possible. You see the state of trump and all the things that make him an aweful candidate and you say “how could the dems not beat that” instead of “what on earth could exert so much influence that even being that terrible couldn’t stop him?”
There’s no amount of “the dems not having a strong enough message” that overcomes the divide in the candidates, without huge influence. Their campaign wasn’t great but no where close enough to lose to someone like trump, in a fair fight. It would’ve had to have been utterly shocking from start to finish and, as bad as it was, it wasn’t that bad.
You really think Trump outspent Harris? You’d be wrong, go look at the data, trump just went on spaces “normal” people listen, such as podcasts, where Harris didn’t.
He spoke about how America is broken, he gave incorrect reasons why, and is lying about helping people with his policies, but he didn’t lie and tell people everything is fine like the dems
Then this would be the first time in modern American history that this has happened. If so, then thats a huge thing and most likely, it’ll be the social media owners now being more disproportionally ppowerful. That would be more in line with everything that’s happened before.
Youre also relying on accurate self reporting from musk, the republicans and trump there.
I’m basing what I’ve said on whats happened before. Election spending won’t be reliably verifiable this quickly.
Republican or Democrat, the candidate that spends the most wins. Therefore, fund raising is winning.
you do know that in all last 3 elections dnc outspent gop by more than 50% ? last time we raised less than gop was with bush in 2004. harris raised more than 1.6 billion while trump raised about a billion. 600 million extra money they get is for not having a candidate with anti-rich anti-establishment anti-israel policies. hillary was similar story yet we barely saw her campaigning compared to trump. where does all this money go ?
compare that to jill stein who raised 2 million. dnc probably spent 10 times that money on just smearing her.
I’m not thrilled with the DNC either, but I’m not buying this whole idea that they are shooting themselves in the foot on purpose. The DNC does better when they win elections.
In previous elections, the candidate that raised the most money was more likely to win. Also, a moderate Democrat won the last election. They made the decisions they made in this election cycle because they thought it was their best chance of winning.
I don’t have access to the data that they have to determine whether the leftist that Lemmy wants on the ticket could actually win the general.
I’d certainly like to believe that it’s just that simple and all the DNC needs to do is put up a pro-Palestine Democratic Socialist and the election is in the bag… I just don’t know if that’s the reality on the ground. If that is not the reality on the ground, are the leftists that stayed home still committed to their protest? Or is there a point at which they would admit that we haven’t had a true leftist on the ticket because a true leftist is not viable?
I hope someone can put together some clear data to answer that question soon… I’m afraid that a pro-Palestine Socialist will get crushed by AIPAC funded attack ads about Marxism and supporting terrorism that will really stick with moderates, and that no matter how energized the base is it wouldn’t be enough to win the general.
I am not saying that they are losing on purpose. I’m saying that they are making decisions about policies and candidates based on fund raising rather than on attracting voters. On purpose or not, they did shoot themselves in the foot by courting disaffected Republican voters. Everyone knew they were not going to win a lot of those voters, but they sure did rake in a lot of dough. I believe that is their primary motivation.
I mean the Republicans are doing the same. Lining their pockets as they make decisions. Why is it so foreign to do with one costume rather than the other?
I’m not thrilled with the DNC either, but I’m not buying this whole idea that they are shooting themselves in the foot on purpose. The DNC does better when they win elections.
Grey’s Law applies here.
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.
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.
Democrats (DNC and donors) don’t want to win with a progressive. They’d rather have Trump. They’ll never embrace anyone like Bernie.
You missed the point about the money… They’re hooked
Hooked on election funding despite it not really doing anything for her despite the huge advantage? Yeah that’s a good strategy.
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.
Bernie isn’t the exception that proves the rule:
He’s not a fucking Democrat.
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…
It would be worse than you imagine. Wouldn’t need the liberal media or the big money to move against it. People don’t translate policy positions into support for candidates. They vote on vibes, and any candidate espousing consistently left-wing positions sounds like a dangerous socialist to a good 2/3s of the country.
Not saying I love it, I just don’t know what the answer is.
Education. We just signed over the official apparatus to the fascists, though. So, uh, it’s gonna be much harder than it should have been.
The “vibes” campaign by the Dems just failed hard.
And why is it that only the right should get to move “vibes” by sticking with extreme positions? Especially as things like universal health care, public housing, strong unions or debt free education are just normal in other western countries.
Because selfish vibes driven by greed and fear come easy when education is lacking.
The “vibes” campaign by the Dems just failed hard.
Turns out the “Please don’t vote for fascism” vibe isn’t very appealing to the country.
And why is it that only the right should get to move “vibes” by sticking with extreme positions? Especially as things like universal health care, public housing, strong unions or debt free education are just normal in other western countries.
I didn’t say we should give up any of those positions. I was saying policy positions do not consistently translate into votes, and the US electorate is easily spooked by anything they’re told resembles ‘socialism’.
Turns out the “Please don’t vote for fascism” vibe isn’t very appealing to the country.
That was one vibe. Unfortunately, the rest of the vibe from the Democrats have been, “Well, things are actually pretty good, just look at our charts. Economy is doing great!”. I think that’s where they really failed the vibe check, telling people not that they will improve things in a major way, but that the status quo is mostly acceptable and they’ll keep things from getting worse.
Change was the order of the day, and they ran a campaign on stability instead.
That too.
and any candidate espousing consistently left-wing positions sounds like a dangerous socialist to a good 2/3s of the country.
Harris just demonstrated that running to the right is no longer a winning proposition.
Yeah I was surprised to see Trump is just going to disband the department of education, but what can you do 🤷♂️
Even education doesn’t work friend. We’ve seen people reject logic time and time again. They even did a study on numeracy and political affiliations and the responses were not surprising…. https://youtu.be/zB_OApdxcno
Not education in the sense of teaching basic literacy and such, political education. Class consciousness, if one prefers such terms.
The essential outcome of the study. The better you are at understanding numbers and math. The worse you are at interpreting data that counters your beliefs. Like laughably bad. 40%+ish bad.
Ah not sure if you watched the video. But agreed. I’m not sure it will work but we better damn try our best in our personal lives. Can’t trust society to help guide anymore :/
Ah, no, I didn’t. I generally don’t watch videos. I just read what you said about numeracy and moved on to the point about other forms of education being my concern.
Haha that’s totally fair. I generally don’t either. But that one surprised me a bit. Friend at work shared it to show the context of how confused we all are due to what we are objectively told to feel. Rather than HOW we feel.
I watched this video when it came out and I disagree with the findings in it, because to me it seems less to indicate that people reject logic because of political affiliations, and more people are critical of studies that contradict prior knowledge.
People interpreting results on the skin cream have absolutely no frame of reference. There isn’t a brand name associated with the skin cream that might have some kind of recognition for people to have prior knowledge. The study that they are presented with is the first time they are seeing anything about this skin cream.
People weighing in on gun control, have a lot of prior knowledge on the topic. Now whether all this knowledge is based on facts or data is obviously questionable. But regardless they have prior experience with the topic. So naturally you are going to be critical of a study showing you results that directly contradict your prior knowledge. Also from the video it doesn’t seem clear that they are asking them to specifically treat it like math problem and make judgements based on the study alone. They are asked whether they think gun control is effective. And while obviously they have the infographic right in front of them, most people are not going to base their judgements solely on that data alone.
To put it another way, what if the study was based on something non-political, like say whether smoking 2 packs of cigarettes a day improves or worsened lung capacity over the course of a decade? I think most people would be heavily critical of the study that shows smoking improved lung capacity even if the data they are presented reflects that. And I don’t think it would be because they are simply rejecting logic and numeracy based on affiliations. It’s because they have prior information and knowledge that directly contradicts the singular study that is presented to them.
And this is ignoring the fact that while the statistic they use to measure the effectiveness for the cream is very tangible and direct. Either the rash improves or it worsens. And you can make direct comparisons with the control groups. In the gun control study you are comparing different sets of cities, ones that have gun control laws and ones that don’t. You aren’t comparing the same set of cities before and after gun control. So already this is a poor study. Then to make matters worse the statistic they use to measure the effectiveness is “crime worsened” and “crime improved”. Not crime committed with firearms. Or even just violent crimes. Just crimes. And in cities where gun control laws have been implemented, crime is naturally going to go up because there is a new law for people to break. Anybody who isn’t following the gun control laws in that city are committing a crime whereas people in the cities without those laws are doing the exact same thing, but it’s just not counted towards “crime” because it hasn’t been outlawed.
That’s what happened in 2015/2016. BeRnIe Is So ExTrEmE!
Yes you do. We all do.
I do?
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.
Thank you.
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
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.
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.
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.
This is a systematic failure. Non-Harris voters are definitely at fault, but so is the DNC for moving further right and abandoning progressives and for sitting on their ass for 4 years.
Democracy is participatory. If it isn’t your job, you can’t complain when it isn’t done to your liking.
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.
Could have had a bad bitch.
If Democrats could hear criticism, they’d be very upset.
Criticism is just a 9 letter word for “Russian asset” to Democrats in 2024.
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
I never gave to a politician before Bernie Sanders. I wanted to see him win so bad.
I will never forget or forgive the DNC for 2016. I worked on his campaign. I went to the primary, in my state at the time a caucus, and felt the energy and excitement of everyone. He was the real deal. Unfortunately, he’s a little too old now.
Other Dem campaigns often don’t invite their voters to help out like Bernie or Stacey Abrams - instead they ask for money repeatedly. I got a million texts for money this year. It’s giving “Election Christmas” in a capitalist way.
Lmao. Historians.
I should have gone to bed at a reasonable time last night instead of doom scrolling, historians say.
