238
The Lesser Evil
(lemmygrad.ml)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2024
238 points (88.4% liked)
Gauchiasses
428 readers
5 users here now
Nous sommes
Nous ne sommes
Mais le plus important
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Most people said that Kamala went right due to her and Biden capitulation of the border topic, that she attempted to outflank the GOP from the right, which polls show was a losing strategy. This is very different from the accused left wing purity testing, which barely happend this election cycle, because most outspoken people on the left absolutely supported voting for Harris despite not agreeing with her. I don't know how tuned in you were on this side of the media landscape, but the messaging from the left was that Trump is hitlerian and will most likely want to imprison or kill people from the left, as all fascists in the past did once they took the power. The left in USA was never this alarmist and geared up to fight for their continued existence, so the idea that they instead stayed in homes as a show of protest is frankly unrealistic.
What I saw on lemmy past those few months was a shit ton of posts like this one - antagonizing the left and claiming that they won't vote because of the Gaza genocide. Also a lot of other kinds of voter shaming or blackmail. I don't know if it was maliciously botted or if DNC strategists actually thought it was a good idea - which I doubt - but continously mentioning the worst looking aspect of potential Harris presidency worked in Dems favour. And there, again, leftists argued that it was a losing strategy and that it will cost Harris voters more. They wanted some pressure to be put on Harris, so she would divert from this cataclysmic collision course. Barely anyone even spoke against voting for her at all. If your analysis of the sentiment in months leading to the elections pointed to that, you most likely had your head up your ass.
The left had everything to lose in those elections. They went and canvased for Harris despite not agreeing with her message. They tried to course correct the disastrous campaign she led, and often was met with unrelenting arrogance of the center claiming that nothing can or should be done with Dems messaging about Israel or the border. Topics of price gouging or feeding children, despite being popular with voters across the line were dropped almost immediately, and instead pro-corporate and business-as-usual messaging went out. The left repeatedly said that Dems would lose if they wont change, and now they did lose because they refused to do that.
I'm not even from the USA, so I wasn't that exposed to the mainstream USA media, but I know this anti-leftist propaganda was also constantly droned in TV. I know however how the internet side of left wing media looked like, and it was almost unanonymous that everyone needed to go vote for Harris or else the democracy will die. And that's why I'm fairly sure that your accusations of the left causing the Harris loss are bullshit - if anything, they were the people most concerned about it.
As for anyone actually calling to vote 3rd party, you surely do realise those were bots or paid shills, right? They never even went beyond in explaining the Jizz Stain policy the point of "unlike Harris she hates Jews", and overall their attempts to convice anyone were very uninspiring. She did get 0.4% iirc, so someone did fall for that, but come on, you know that's bullshit. The left absolutely did not support or endorse her.
The voices of "you should not vote for Harris" were very sparse, so you would be hard pressed to claim that they represented a significant portion of left wing users on lemmy. Those people complained instead about Harris fucking up, which she did, and now you're blaming her loss on the left based on those aformentioned sparse voices instead of learning from the criticism of the vast majority of the people from the left. What you're basicially claiming is that those 14% missing voters were result of leftist activism against Harris instead of the ineffective campaign, but I bet you also believe at the same time it would be dumb to listen to the left (that had apparently this much political power to sway so many voters) because listening to their advice at any point would weaken the DMC. So even if I was somehow wrong with my assesment of the internet left willingness to vote, your point that Dems lost because of the left would still be wrong, because if they could have possibly bridged the gap of 14%, then they absolutely should have been the target audience of the campaign, and Harris should have instead done everything the left asked of her instead of alienating them. I don't believe that was the case, as again, the left was very motivated to vote for Harris, but if it was, it would only show how bad the Dems campaign was.
My legs got numb and I'm long done pooping so cheers, sorry for the long comment, I need to eat more fiber.
So you’re basically telling me to not believe my own eyes and that the leftist spreading FUD about Biden/Kamala leading up to the election and afterwards don’t exists.
Don't mistake criticism for spreading fear, leftists did commonly and openly agree that Trump would be far worse. Dems had time to change their messaging in accordance with that critique and they didn't. Claiming that their campaign that leftists critiqued for being ineffective failed because leftists pleaded for Dems to change it is trying to have the cake and eat it. Again, if leftists proposing different campaign direction could possibly have enough political momentum to actually discourage 14% of voters from voting, then it would absolutely be a critical error from the Harris side not to listen to them. As "the left" isn't unified block that speaks in unified voice, while the DMC is, the fault in that case would lie on the Dems side. And again again, assuming that was the case would be very naive. The wide consensus on the left was that voting for Harris was absolutely the only option to stop fascism from taking hold. People who failed to show up were people that didn't care about politics enough and partialy believed Trump lies, or assumed "he wouldn't be so bad", or didn't care which of those 2 parties would win because they assumed nothing would have changed. Trump agenda is extremely conservative, and vast majority of people on the left recognised that as a threat. Claiming they didn't show up to vote despite all the clamour about Trump being Hitler from the left is a weak attempt at scapegoating them.
Don’t mistake FUD for criticism. The difference is timing.
Propaganda is at its peak right before an election. At that point in the election cycle it is too late to change most things. “Criticism” only serves to discourage people from voting in order to tip the scales.
No one is saying that the difference in voters in 2020 (largest turnout ever) and 2024 is entirely because of leftists.
If anything, most leftists tuned down their criticism of the Biden/Harris administration in the few past months leading to the election, especially since Harris was announced as replacement. Critique of USA letting the Gaza genocide happen was absolutely going on strong all the way since Israel started bombing hospitals in retaliation for October 7, and critique of Biden's capitulation to the right on the border issue was going strong ever since Texas started putting barbed wire in water crossings and Biden decided he'd rather double down on xenophobia and "strong border" instead of dismantling the lies from the right. I would say the critique got strongest when those protests on campuses happened and the government started to crack down on dissidents and banning people for being against Israel. To be fair, with the critique also came some praise, since Biden's administration did some neat things for working class, and when Minnesota democrats won the slim majority and started voting as united block to put in place progressive legislation they were celebrated by the internet left as the example to follow... Which also was a critique of the federal dems, who failed to act that way.
I'd wager you just tuned that out and it only started to be an issue to you, once the elections got closer. The left got ignored for the entire 4 years, despite ceaselessly clamoring about changes that need to happen, and now they got singled out as the reason why dems lost. Also, what was mostly critiqued wasn't the government to be, but the campaign messaging, which absolutely could have been changed for more persuasive instead of borderline threatening and legitimizing the lies of the GOP. It was a shitty campaign, and Dems should have course corrected instead of, well, losing.
Your original point was that it was somehow the left that failed to show up for elections, and you put blame on them for dems losing. Now you switched gear to claiming that there was some conspiracy from the left to spread anti-harris propaganda, to get Trump to win, which is completely nonsensical keeping in mind what goals the left in USA has. Unless that's what you're suggesting, that the left united with the right to bring down the center, or something like that? I'd love to hear how you think that came down. And following that logic, I guess you'd want Dems to "cut ties" with the left even further and look for allies on the right? Because if so, it would be picture perfect example of what the post depicts, and it would be very funny if not for being very tragic.
There is also the issue of Jill Stein and her army of bots, but I feel like it would be too much of an undeserved insult to you to assume you think those people were from the left and not from the right. She was an obvious spoiler candidate put forward by GOP, I've never heard any praise of her in the leftist media bubble. Trump did praise her, Cornell West and RFK though, and she did pop up relatively recently, as she does every 4 years when it's time to promote a book and fall of democracy. It would be a failure of basic political literacy to consider her as anything else than a right wing spoiler candidate, especially after almost 4 years of silence from her side, so I'm just getting that out of the way unless you want to challenge that point in some way for some reason.
Paragraph 1: regarding Gaza, leading up to these election “leftists” on lemmy, especially from lemmy.ml we’re promoting this as a reason to not vote or vote 3rd party. Both options lead to a win for Trump.
Same situation for the border response. With both topics things are worse under Trump proving they were bad faith arguments.
“Dismantling lies”? You realize the people spreading these lies don’t believe in things like climate change, vaccines, etc (ie reality).
Paragraph 2: I didn’t tune it out. You’re pretending that the verbiage didn’t change to ‘don’t vote/vote 3rd party because of this’. Which is a winning situation for Trump. Proving they were said in bad faith.
For you to blame a “shitty campaign” on the loss is to ignore billionaires buying votes, foreign bots campaigning in favor of Trump and a republican propaganda machine that can convince half the population that reality is fake news.
Not to mention it is no different than someone watching a professional sporting event. Waiting till a team wins and then giving their armchair analysis based on the results even though they could never compete at that level. AKA Confirmation bias
Paragraph 3: the anti Harris talking points leading up to the election were posted the primarily in lemmy.ml. Rather than get into a debate about what that signifies I will let the consensus about who populates lemmy.ml speak for itself. Pointing out again that not voting for Harris or voting 3rd party benefits Trump and anyone who prefers him as president.
Paragraph 4: see my response to paragraph 3
My brother in Christ, I've just explained in detail how those points were critique so Dems could fix their campaign and convince the populace to vote for them, and you answered to that as if I told you those were reasons leftists didn't go to vote. I know the Trump would be worse. That's precisely why the left tried to persuade Dems to change their direction. I don't know if you're answering just on reaction, without any thought going that, or are you wearing some blinds not allowing you to hear my arguments. The original point was that you claimed the left didn't show up for the elections, and to my detailed argument about how that doesn't make any sense seeing how desperate the left was for Harris victory, you replied with basically "yes it does". Yes, Harris should have dismantled lies of the right about illegal immigration, instead of legitimizing it and allowing the right to change it from just the "border issue" to "economy issue based on the unsafe border". Since Dems instead went with "yes the border is a problem but we will fix it" the average voter had no reason not to believe that the border was the pressing issue GOP made it up to be. Why would you or I care about the fact that people spreading those lies are insane? They shouldn't have tried to placate the GOP decision makers who spread this propaganda, but dismantle their lies so general populace had opposing viewpoint.
"You’re pretending that the verbiage didn’t change to ‘don’t vote/vote 3rd party because of this’" Yeah, it absolutely didn't change to that. None of the major leftist political media creators suggested voting for 3rd party instead of Harris, especially in the swing states. What happened on lemmy.ml was Russian bots posting bullshit. And I won't deny those posts were posted and comments commented, but you yourself know fully well those were bots, so what the hell are you talking about and why are you blaming that on the left? Not to mention that ml ideologically represents only a small subset of the "left" and most folks don't consider tankies leftists due to their authoritarian bent, that's beside the point. It was absolutely against the best interests of the left to not vote for Harris, which is why the left canvased and campaigned for her, despite not agreeing with her message.
If Dems shitty campaign was 100% the reason Trump won, then he'd have won 100% of the votes. There were many reasons that helped him, including the fact that USA is racist and sexist and many people probably just didn't want to vote for black woman. Leftists helped Dems get a bit more %, though in current political landscape the left doesn't have nearly enough power to influence decisions of major politicians, and unfortunately Harris decided to ignore them.
It's not armchair analysis, the critique from the left was constructive and included how to change the messaging to improve the odds. I won't be able to tell you that Dems would have had amazing victory if they did everything or anything the left tried to persuade them to do, since they didn't and I don't know how the future would have looked then, or how the right would have responded, but you can't also claim they wouldn't or go into the territory of claiming that they actually harmed Harris chances. You could have claimed that if the left was silent, it doesn't make much sense even with the point you've initially made (that they didn't show up because Harris wasn't left-leaning enough), since even if the left was complicit in spreading anti-Harris propaganda - opposite of which happened - they would have still applied pressure on Dems to address their issues. I never claimed that Dems would have definitely won if they listened to the left; it was you, who claimed that Dems lost because of some apparent actions from the left, to support of which you only have a handful of posts on a platform you're aware have been heavily botted, as it was repeatedly discussed topic. Out of us two I'd definitely see you more leaning into having a confirmation bias in this case, especially since you're ignoring just how absurd the idea of the left boycotting Harris is. Trump literally said he wants to take care of the "radical left" in the country "using army if that's required", USA citizens with a leftist footprint in social media were threatened with death by a president candidate, and you think anyone from the left wanted that to happen? Unlike centrists the left campaigned for Harris as if their lives depended on that, because their lives did depend on that! You are delusional if you believe it was leftists that failed to show up on the elections day. They were very active in attempts to make Harris more electable, and Dems lost despite that, not thanks to it.
All you’ve explained is your opinions. Your “arguments” are just opinions. But you are stating them as if they are facts.
Polling showed that border control is important to more than just republicans. So dems did their job and said they would address it.
You came up with some conspiracy theory that no one cared about border control until dems said they would address it.
You deny the verbiage changed to “don’t vote/vote 3rd party” then you admit that it happened, claiming it was only bots.
The reason bot farms exist is to change public opinion. They claim to be someone they are not and repeat talking points until other who are not bots start repeating what they say. In this case other leftists.
You claim that it is just critique. In reality it is a tactic called FUD used to discourage voters.
How could leftists, who are such a small part of the voting populous possibly know how to run an effective campaign better than a team of strategists that have been doing it as a career?
https://lemmy.world/post/22149390
I don't know how reliable those numbers are, but that was exactly my point - Dems lost votes on alienating arab and genocide disliking voters and leftists attempted many times to persuade Harris to change her stance on support for Israel. Unless you believe all arabs and anti-genocide voters are leftists I'm not sure what point you're trying to make with that link.
The article said dems lost votes as a result of progressive activism. Progressives are left leaning on the spectrum.
Harris said she would do everything in her power to end the war in Gaza.
Netanyahu celebrated Trumps win.
Are you joking? Or are you delusional? Have you linked the article you meant to? The article said that support of Israel doing genocide in Gaza is low. People obviously protested the military support for genocide, that much I believe is a given, as people did that in all major democratic countries even if those countries didn't support Israel in any way. And you're claiming that Harris lost elections not because she failed to convince her electorate that she will do something about it, but rather because this electorate protested? And you're blaming the fact that protests happened solely on the left, and think that broader populace was fine with genocide until leftists did something?
I'm pretty sure you have to be trolling at this point, but okay. Lets square it up. USA provided military and diplomatic aid to Israel, that allowed Israel to conduct a Palestinian genocide in Gaza. They could have stopped the support at that point, but they didn't. People protested spending their tax money on exploding children in Gaza, and USA government attempted to silence those protests, which included censuring Rashida Talib. Biden outright lied, claiming he saw photos of newborns beheaded by Hamas, a claim we know now was completely false. And lets not talk about the morality of it all, lets talk about optics, how that entire affair looked like to USA citizens. Democrats came out like blood hungry warmongers and Biden refused to do anything about that. He sometimes said that he asked Netanyahu to stop, but got ignored and rewarded Israel with more taxpayer paid weapons. That made Dems look additionally weak. Then the shift happened and Harris came into the forefront, where she every now and then said something to the effect of "she will do something to help", but continued to refuse to platform pro-palestinian voices and to promise to take care of Israel defences, for example here. She and her party has all the power, in the eyes of the people, to do something right now (or rather, back then, now Biden sent even more weapons), but she did nothing. One of her most clipped moments was her admission she wouldn't do anything differently from Biden, who already had all that blood on his hands in the eyes of the voters.
And you blame the protesters for asking her to do something instead of her for doing nothing/not enough? And not even the protesters, you're singling out the leftists as the people who caused harm here, while they asked the other side to stop, and other side happily enabled genocide. You do realise it's not just left wing and people interested in politics that care about people dying, right? Because aaaall of that above convinced people who didn't think about politics on a daily basis that Harris is unworthy of trust, which put her on a level playing field with Trump. Some of those people even bought the argument that Trump is anti-war and went to vote for him. And you think the left did it? That they were the sole force of disapproval that caused the protests to erupt, and not that protests were obviously justified and most likely reaction to bombs exploding children in Gaza?
The blame for that lies entirely on Dems, specifically on Biden and Harris. They could have done the popular thing and stopped sending weapons to Israel. They didn't, and it caused a lot of people to think worse of them because of that. Out of those folks, those who didn't want to understand politics and flet they didn't have anything to worry about regardless of who won, or had any other number of median voter thoughts, decided to stay home. Or vote Trump, since he confidently claimed he will stop that war, despite obviously not planning to.
Blaming protesters protesting an unpopular and sustained political decision of the ruling government for this government losing the elections is wild. The mental gymnastics you must need to perform to justify that take baffle me. The gall to blame the left specifically for all that, as if all people wouldn't respond to genocide negatively, is incredible. Overall, 10/10, would not reccomend. I don't intend to engage further in this discussion if that's the kind of bullshit you want to drag up, personally I find it sort of disgusting.
If protestors are protesting Harris by giving power to someone who will commit more genocide then are they acting in good faith? Of course not. That was an excuse used by bad faith actors to trick the gullible into giving Trump power. And you’re just repeating the talking points that the left was tricked with while trying to claim the left didn’t do it, it was just bots.
You're the one baselessly claiming that the left protested by not voting, the protests I spoke of were those where people came out in the streets, because those actually happened. Nothing in the article or my comments pointed to people on the left not wanting to vote. Also, you seem to have missed the part where regular people disliked the genocide.
This was from the article:
“Brought down their party” indicates the progressive activism was related to voting. Not protesting in the streets.
"Democrats Ignored Gaza and Brought Down Their Party" indicates nothing about activism and everything about Democrats doing unpopular stuff that costed them elections. The activism, all along, was focused on making Biden/Harris do something in Gaza, not voting them out, as voting them out wouldn't make any sense neither for the left, nor for Palestinians. The idea that it would, and that the protests intended to do that is delusional, it doesn't even hint at having any connection with reality, pushing things in that direction would do nothing to achieve the aims activists had. You mixing up bot activity on lemmy with leftists protesting and also canvasing on the streets make no sense, and your only point of connection is the fact that those bots posted on lemmy.ml. You even have a straight forward article that says Dems lost the elections because they refused to do anything with Gaza (a disputable position at the very least, but nevermind), which obviously means that general electorate was less willing to vote for them and that resulted in less votes, and you conclude from that that leftists specifically protested the genocide by not voting. You ignore the obvious and substitute it for the unsubstantiated absurd.
You’re contradicting yourself:
You claim that it is baseless to say the left protested the Gaza situation by not voting. Then you say the Gaza situation was unpopular and costed dems the election.
To pretend that protesting Gaza in a way that blames democrats for Netanyahu’s actions has no impact on the popularity of a Democratic candidate and thus results in them losing an election is to contradict this statement:
The point of connection is the talking points/arguments against Biden/Harris. Placing blame on them for the actions of Netanyahu and pretending it is acceptable to let Iran threaten our national security.
It wasn’t the general electorate that was protesting Gaza. It was the leftists.
You’ve substantiated what I’ve said every time you’ve contradicted yourself.