In Trump’s latest Truth Social post, he shares a disgusting video depicting a golden statue of himself, a sky scraper with his name on it, a superyacht on the Gaza coast, him holding hands with a female entertainer in a night club wearing a see-through gown, him & Netanyahu shirtless together sipping alcohol on the Gaza coast with a sign that says “Trump Gaza,” and money raining down with kids jumping up to grab it.
All the signs of what many would call the antichrist, yet the religious-right is convinced he’s their savior. He wants to turn Gaza into a Las Vegas style resort with his name plastered everywhere.
Lol.
Now that you “established reality”, let me add one caveat of reality that keeps getting ignored when folks make your argument.
Left wing voters are not motivated by genocide, nor trying to meet those who do support it in the middle with “just a bit of genocide, as a treat”.
Maybe America can’t give up its “most important ally in the middle east”. But in that case, unless the Dems could find a way to bridge the gap between appeasing Israel and stopping genocide, then it was obvious they were going to lose.
But they didn’t even try to. FFS they didn’t even try to pay lip service to the very notion. Nor did they try to rally their base with policies their base has been asking for for decades. Instead they campaigned on “we are a big enough tent to welcome Republicans like Dick Fucking Cheney”. With a last minute candidate swap putting forward someone who lost the last primary by a frankly embarrassing margin.
I voted for Kamala, I kept these opinions to myself to not push voters away from doing so, and I pushed the harm reduction argument to anyone who was considering abstaining or voting 3rd party. I still believe it was the best play we had with the hand we were dealt. But it wasn’t the best play the Democrats had, it was damn near the worst.
When we have decades of data to show how many people don’t vote, and how fickle those who do are, it’s on the political party to motivate their voters. And Dems just didn’t fucking bother. On the contrary, the reality is that the party the motivated almost all voters in the country was MAGA. Be it for or against Trump. Almost no one was voting FOR Kamala.
So welcome to reality, the reality that you cant win an election based on the virtue of “being the second worst option”.
There is no bridging the gap. The dipshit protest voters made that clear. They had to have it 100% their way or no way at all. Because they’re children who are willing to sacrifice our democracy over a single fucking issue.
Remember, these protest voters were so fucking stupid that they chose to allow Donald Trump to become president, knowing he would be FAR, FAR worse on the topic of Palestine. They never gave a flying fuck about Palestine. They only cared about being morally superior. Otherwise they would have swallowed their dipshit pride and voted in such a manner as to help Palestinians as much as they had the power to.
You can sit here and complain about the Democrat party all you want, but the alternative was so fucking bad, proven by 1 already utterly failed presidency, that only a fool of the highest degree would act in such a way as to allow that alternative back into power, no matter how many complaints they have about the Democrat party. And, oh look, now our federal government is being deconstructed in front of our very eyes, oligarchs are pilfering the public coffers, and Gaza will be turned to ash. Actions, meet consequences.
You say the Democrat party didn’t do anything to help themselves. I can agree they could have done more. But they had a successful presidency to tout, a voting record proving they try to help average Americans, stats showing a recovering economy, which they also touted, and have many representatives opening discussions about things like universal healthcare, which has never, and will never, be part of the discussion over on the other side of the aisle. They did not just sit around thinking “hey look at the other option” was their only strategy. Just look at the Kamala/Trump debate. She talked facts and policy and he shit himself and talked about immigrants eating people’s pets, explaining that he only had concepts of plans.
You need to understand that the brunt of the blame here does not fall on the Democrat party. It falls squarely on Americans for being trash, low information, easily manipulated voters. It’s not Democrat’s fault Americans aren’t responsible enough to inform themselves. Americans are failing spectacularly at their civic duty.
Yeah, it’s a whole hell of a lot easier to utilize hate, fear, and lies to motivate people than to expect adults to be responsible and actually do their homework.
In terms of an individual’s personal philosophy, I agree, but I’m not so willing to give the Democratic party slack. They SERIOUSLY fucked up 2016 and 2024 elections - votes are earned. This is literally their job and they are incompetent. We still have Dem lawmakers on fucking TWITTER. How slow and out of touch can they be - they should know the owner of Twitter is not safe, threw up a Nazi salute, and sold us out to Russia via Starlink satellites.
They lost on social media and on the policies themselves not being exciting enough. Gaslighting the public that the economy is good when starvation increased by like 8% and homelessness by 18% in 2024
It’s frustrating as fuck. Had they just held a fair primary in both 2016 and 2024, we may have won. Instead they testified in court in 2016 that they didn’t have to hold fair elections. Noodle spine Hakeem Jeffries seems unable to do anything but speak at fundraisers and raise funds, per his own admissions.
Luckily we have people like Bernie, AOC, Jasmine Crockett, Maxwell Frost, Al Green, Merkley, Markey, and many others who are speaking out and doing the work.
Since we’re adding caveats of reality, I’ll join in: the Democrats’ myriad mistakes and missteps in “motivating” left wing voters does not absolve those voters of their own responsibility.
You did the right thing
I did the same, despite my own similar lack of “motivation”, because as you said, it was the best play we had with the hand we were dealt. The criticism here is leveled at the third party voters and abstainers, because the people here are voters. If you want to criticize Democratic leadership, I encourage you to direct that criticism directly toward them.
I would love to have had a viable alternative, but without significant representation in Congress and state Governorship, it’s just not going to happen. Successful presidential campaigns don’t just appear out of thin air (unless you have a massive cult of personality). The vast majority of presidents were previously Senators or Governors, offices that they rose to after careers that began at the local level. If you want better options, actually vote in your local elections, and encourage other leftists to do the same.
Until then, red vs blue is our reality, and criticizing the lesser evil for not being good enough is a virtue signal circle jerk.