When you run on the status quo, and the status quo sucks, people are gonna turn to whoever manages to present themselves as an alternative.

When you run to the right, and the people who like right-wing policies already have a party giving them the policies they want, they're not gonna switch parties, and you're just going to alienate the parts of your base/coalition that are affected by those policies.

Not an effortpost but I think those are two simple, straightforward responses to anyone being like, "How could this possibly happen?"

I'm also running around countering any "she lost because she's a woman" takes with with Tammy Baldwin in WI and Elissa Slotkin in MI winning despite their states going to Trump, which are two invaluable rhetorical data points, imo.

I’ll start by just saying that the classic response to the election results remains timeless:

If democrats were serious about protecting the things you cared so much about, they would have taken the election more seriously than nominating a candidate who so clearly had dementia that they were eventually forced to pull him from the race. They only pulled him from the race just months before the election because his mental decline was so obvious that it was completely indefensible, and that’s after he did untold damage in both voter turnout and campaign time.

1. The DNC learned nothing from 2016. It is the definition of irrationality to do the same thing twice and expect different outcomes.

2. Bernie could garner huge crowds and massive support by campaigning on the basis of policy that has mass appeal, such as universal healthcare. Kamala chose not to do this because she prioritised business as usual over stopping Trump.

3. You say "things will get worse under Trump". That's true. But things got worse under Biden/Harris after Trump's first term as president - environmental policy, the border camps, reproductive rights, trans rights, cop city, the genocide of Palestinians etc. So when you say "we must vote for Kamala or things will get worse" that line of reasoning is at best unconvincing and at worst it betrays the 4-year state of amnesia you have lived in because you are so politically detached from the consequences of your voting.

4. Telling people to protect democracy—the system where you vote for the candidate who best represents your political values—by voting for a person who in no way represents your political values in order to save democracy is tortured logic.

5. No, I'm not an accelerationist. Me advocating for people not to vote for Kamala Harris is not an accelerationist position because we should not be giving a mandate for a genocide, climate change, and civil rights-eroding accelerationist by voting for them.

6. How many delegates did Harris win in the last primaries? How many did she win in the primaries to get her to run for president this time? Is this what you claim as your democracy?

7. When I list a number of legitimate grievances with Kamala Harris and Joe Biden's regime and issues with Kamala's election platform, none of which have a single thing to do with her race or gender, and you respond by calling me racist or misogynistic it drives home how little you are willing to listen to my political concerns and how intransigent your favoured party is. When you act this way and then tell me that people have to vote for Kamala in order to push her left while you yourself are unwilling to even acknowledge the fact that Kamala's platform has serious issues, it signals to me that there will be no shifting left on anything. I already knew this fact but you have done an exceptional job of inadvertently teaching other people this lesson.

8. When entering into negotiations with someone, it's a uniquely terrible tactic to hand over your one state-sanctioned bargaining chip before making even one single demand.

9. You are chasing the DNC to the right and one day you will wake up and wonder to yourself "How did I end up all the way over here?" I'm not following you into that marsh but you're welcome to go into it yourself, just don't get upset at me when I point out what you're heading into and don't get angry when I refuse to blindly follow you.

10. Kamala Harris is the only thing that can stop fascism. Kamala Harris cannot do anything to protect reproductive rights, trans rights, Palestinian lives, the lives of Marcellus Williams and Robert Robertson etc. because she is powerless to do anything about it 🫠

11. Kamala Harris said she would "follow the law" regarding trans people. She was angling to become the primary lawmaker in the US. Not only does this show a lack of whatever libs care about like "leadership" but it shows how cowardly and detestable she is because she understands the law and she is willing to follow it but not when it comes to things like international law, only when it's laws that she can use to hide behind while trans people are subjected to further oppression through legislation that strips them of rights.

12. Historically, fascism has never been stopped at the ballot box. You being convinced that this is possible does not sway my opinion on any matter aside from my estimation of your political awareness and your ability to achieve change.

13. You had four years (eight+ if you count Trump's regime and the lead-up to it in this calculation) to "stop fascism". What did you do in this period of time? Did you push Biden and Kamala to adopt policies which have mass support? Did you do anything except go to back to brunch?

14. When you accuse me of not organising irl, when you say that I'm not doing anything:

• I'm not about to dox myself

• I'm not going to make a laundry list of the things that I have done w/organising and activism just to impress (?) you, especially not when you've already told me that I haven't done anything

• It's a huge self-report and it's obvious that you're projecting

• You alienate others by telling them "I do not recognise your efforts and everything that you have done is unimportant in my estimation"

15. You aren't entitled to others' votes. Stop pretending that you are.

16. We aren't splitting the so-called left, Kamala Harris did that all by herself.

17. You have no red lines. There is nothing that could make you not support Kamala Harris and we know it. Telling people to drop their standards and ignore their conscience to vote for Kamala is a fatal strategy and you killed her campaign by deploying it.

18. Selective invoking of people of colour to advocate for Kamala was ridiculous and disgustingly tokenistic. Yes, Angela Davis is smarter than I am. Telling me that I'm stupider than her and so I should take my political cues from her with regards to electoralism is a losing argument and it's low-key ableist became you're arguing that the person who lacks intelligence also has a commensurate lack of political virtue. Historically speaking, very intelligent people have had absolutely atrocious politics. Also people like Thomas Sowell and Clarence Thomas are almost certainly a lot smarter than I am. It would be wrong of me not to defer to their superior intellect and their politics, isn't that right?

19. You say that democracy is going to be strangled in its crib and that fascism has come to town. You are maybe posting about this online in your echo chamber and that's it. You do not take politics seriously, not even your own, yet you demand that I take your politics more seriously than you yourself do. There are things that I am doing right now to avert this trend in politics. There are things that I would do if fascism proper had seized power, none of which I would post about online. We are not the same. Enjoy your brunch though.

20. Almost all of your arguments for voting for Kamala Harris (aside from the "it will stop Trump" argument which, in retrospect, appears to be a dismal failure) also apply to reasons for voting for Trump. "You can push them left", "By voting we will get a seat at the table", "Voting third party or not voting at all is a wasted vote", "We have to vote this way to protect the country", "Politics is about comprise - you cannot expect them to be your perfect political candidate", and whatever hold-your-nose-and-vote arguments you trot out. Did you ever stop to ask yourself why it is that you do not find these arguments for voting Trump to be convincing?

21. Last time Trump got elected you were brutally vindictive. You took glee in the thought of people in red states and marginalised groups suffering due to policy and things like natural disasters, regardless of their politics or how they chose to vote. You were excited to tell these people that they were going to get deported and put into concentration camps. You will do it again this time too because you have learned nothing. November came and these people you targeted with your vicious schadenfreude remembered. They aren't going to forget how effortlessly you abandoned them and how you wished the worst suffering and ill-fate upon them.

22. You said that a non-vote or a 3rd party vote is a vote for Trump. We have been shouting from the rooftops that Kamala Harris is fundamentally unwilling and incapable of stopping Trump. History vindicates this position; Trump managed to win the popular vote while Harris underperformed by millions of votes, even compared to Joe Biden. Thus your support for Kamala Harris was therefore support for Donald Trump's presidency. Congratulations on getting the candidate which you campaigned so hard to get elected.

23. I don't care about the US. America must die and if Trump is to be its undertaker then I am relieved to hear it. What you have done is to accelerate the destruction of the US. If I were cynical about achieving my political objectives, wouldn't have said any of the above. If I was an accelerationist I would have been pushing for all of the things that you've been pushing for instead of pushing back against them. I would have even gone so far as to furnish your side with more poisoned chalice arguments (I do this with the far right, I exactly know how to do it). Instead I've been defending your political project against your own excesses and self-defeating narrow mindedness. You are right in the fact that I am your enemy but you are wrong to oppose me because you are a far greater enemy to yourself than I could ever have the stomach to be. You won't listen to a word of what I've said because you refuse to learn and to reflect.

24. A cynical person might argue that my strategy is to oppose you in the knowledge that this will make you react by becoming more deeply entrenched in your position, encouraging a sort of siege mentality in you, so that you see any criticism or difference of opinion as being an existential political threat that must be eradicated as a means to create more disaffected people to radicalise out of bourgeois democracy. This is not my intent. If things improve for the proles and the marginalised because of what I argue for then that's a win for my political objectives. However I can't control your actions and if you choose to respond by taking a hatchet to your precious liberal democracy then, likewise, that's a win for my political objectives. Which way, western man?

A softer list I made on a Lemmy.ml thread that got a good amount of momentum and very little pushback on what liberals should do in the coming years, a mini What is to be Done?

1. Get organized. Join a Leftist org, find solidarity with fellow comrades, and protect each other. The Dems will not save you, it is up to the Workers to protect themselves. The Party for Socialism and Liberation and Freedom Road Socialist Organization both organize year round, every year, because the battle for progress is a constant struggle, not a single election. See if there is a chapter near you, or start one! Or, see if there's an org you like more near you and join it, the point is that organizing is the best thing any leftist can do.

2. Read theory. A good primer is Blackshirts and Reds. It will help contextualize what fascism is, what causes it, and how to stop it. I can offer a good introductory reading list regarding Marxism if you'd like, but this is a good starting point.

3. Aggressively combat white supremacy, misogyny, queerphobia, and other attacks on marginalized communities. Cede no ground.

4. Be more industrious, and self-sufficient. Take up gardening, home repair, tinkering. It is through practice that you elevate your problem-solving capabilities. Not only will you improve your skill at one subject, but your general problem-solving muscles get strengthened as well. Theory guides practice, which sharpens theory to be reapplied to better practice.

5. Learn self-defense. Get armed, if practical. Be ready to protect yourself and others. The Democrats will not save us, we must save each other.

6. Be persistent. If you feel like a single water driplet against a mountain, think of the Grand Canyon. Oh, how our efforts pile up! With consistency, every rock, boulder, even mountain, can be drilled through with nothing but steady and persistent water droplets.

Here is the reading list I am working on, open to advice! I copy and paste it whenever it is asked for, which has been surprisingly frequent.

Edit: Folded the reading list and this list together, I believe that works better.

One step closer to revolution. Only time will tell if it's a fascist one

A good response whenever you hear someone express shock over voting for Trump:

“If you were able to overlook a genocide and cast a vote for Harris, you already know how a conservative was able to overlook Trump’s extremism and vote for him.”

https://xcancel.com/briebriejoy/status/1854548845381787825#m

-Can't blame third parties, the margins are too big and they wouldn't have mattered in a single state.
-Can't blame non-voters, voter turnout was relatively high.
-Can't blame the Electoral College, Trump won the popular vote by almost twice the difference that Hillary has in 2016.
-Can't blame it on people being ignorant of the ramifications, Trump had already been president for 4 years, he was the presumptive nominee all along, and throughout election season he actually polled higher than his favorability when he left office.
-Can't blame corruption or voting machines, the last week of polling had Trump ahead, and the exit polling lines up with the results.
The only thing the Democrats have to blame is themselves, for running a bad campaign with an inferior candidate and striking out on a softball.

A close friend of mine was remarking in the last few weeks how the Democrats had pivoted from the "weird" messaging, which seemed to be working, back to the "he's dangerous and unstable and a threat to democracy" messaging, which they knew from experience did not have much of an effect. In fact, from exit polls, out of people who said "democracy in this country is threatened" or prioritized a candidate's capacity to do the job, a clear majority supported Trump! This is yet another damning piece of evidence that suggests that Democrats were actively not doing what they could to win the election. Either they prioritized fundraising at the expense of outcome, or they actually threw it.

Also, Allan Lichtman BTFO.

That there are fifteen million people in the US who said "I'm not going to vote for genocide and I'm not going to vote for things to stay the same" is fantastic fucking news. You really can't say it any other way. That's fifteen million people who are prime candidates for radicalization.

Harris did not lose (primarily) due to her gender or race. I feel that people who are operating under this assumption need to examine the dialectic here a lot more closely. Kamala's major L is not a testament to Trump being any degree of magnificent but rather a demonstration of how God awful she is. Liberals need to garner far more awareness. If your answer to the question, "Why did Kamala lose?" has anything to do with assuming that it's mainly the fault of reactionary, sexist, and racist white men, you are cutting out a whole bunch of very important factors from this equation. Plenty of marginalized people feel utterly disappointed in the bourgeois, imperialist machine that is the Democratic Party of the United States. 

We've seen that they will truly do nothing to further our rights or even maintain them as they currently stand. They don't care about economic equality, and the most we've gotten from them is lip service. Democrats and Republicans are two heads on a vicious and malevolent double-headed fire-breathing dragon. One of these heads breathes fire of its usual color, and this head will explicitly warn you that this fire is there to kill your ass. The other head, on the other hand, will breathe a mesmerizing, astonishingly flashy rainbow-colored fire instead. On top of that, this head will tell you that if you get touched by this fire, you'll heal from all of the wounds that the other head's fire has given you, but in actuality, it just exacerbates the damage.

This double-headed dragon has wreaked havoc on marginalized communities, and these marginalized communities know, be they oppressed on the basis of race, gender, class, sexuality, disability, religion, or anything else, that the rainbow fire actually has zero healing properties, so stop acting like they do not know because we do. In addition, stop pretending that you care about us because you liberals have constantly demonstrated to me, a poor neurodivergent transfem of color, that you do not care about my view on bourgeois electoralism. It's clear that I am nothing but a pawn to you, and you seem to want to dispose of me the moment that me being your pawn stops working in your favor. If that were anything but the truth, you'd listen to me on how to be a better ally to the marginalized, but you never do. If your outlook is that you want to hurt marginalized people while pretending that you care about them, it's no wonder that KKKamala HarriSS seems right up your alley.

“Imperialism leaves behind germs of rot which we must clinically detect and remove from our land but from our minds as well.”

We've barely gotten past processing democrats third once in a lifetime fuck up in recent memory but I think we are missing out on imagining ehat a Trump presidency actually looks like.

That motherfucker is already doing interviews by refusing to respond to questions and slowly swaying to yacht rock, imagine when he's president for a week and he has to make a decision and hee settles it by a ymca dance competition with the joint chiefs of staff.

(On Democrats running to the right to appease donors, rather than left to appease voters, and losing the election)

They always will, they serve the same donors and bourgeois powers. Marx and Lenin are vindicated by the passage of time. They were not clairvoyant, they just accurately analyzed the systems around them and saw what necessarily follows from their directions.

Everyone, get organized, read theory, learn self-defense and self-sufficiency. A good primer is Blackshirts and Reds. Defend yourselves and protect each other.

There has been a silent protest voter class ignored by mainstream reporting, tabulations, and analysis that can be found hidden within ballot reader error rates. These voters are casting ballots with no presidential candidate, but potentially ballot questions and down ballot votes filled in. They are consciously abstaining from all candidates for president and represent a active but non participating voter. There must be a reason these people cast a vote for no one right? Because they're not "selfishly voting 3rd party" after all, and not voting for their "unicorn" candidate. The only conclusion is that no one is winning these people over with their policies at the federal level, and know local races matter to them more.

I think this fits:

Maybe this isnt the place to have this discussion, but I think it would be great to make these mega threads a regular thing. We have a lot of work to do, people to radicalize, etc.

It begins now.

The Democrats did not treat this as the most important election of our lifetimes. They did not even seriously treat it as an election at all.

They treated it as a protection racket. "Oh, it'd sure be a shame if ol' cousin Donny broke your kneecaps. Now, I can keep him away from you but I'm gonna need a little something from you first."

lmao AOCIA is already on live breaking out the crocodile tears she perfected during Trumps first term.

The real story here is that Trump won the popular vote. That signals an enormous shift in sentiment and culture, and should be the subject of any serious analysis here. This is nothing less than a catastrophic failure of the liberal project and liberal vision--a total implosion of the do-nothing "centrist" political consensus. Democrats have shown over and over and over again that they have nothing to offer the majority of Americans. The Harris campaign was just the apotheosis of the trend: courting capital and neo-conservative ghouls while jettisoning any talk of policies that might help people. This is not a winning election strategy. That should be screamingly obvious now. People are angry, hurting, and looking for anyone that even suggests they understand that pain and might do something about it, even when the suggested solutions make no sense. The only sane response to this result is a SWEEPING reexamination of the neo-liberal consensus. Liberalism in its current form has failed most people, and the Democrats have failed to articulate any message or position that appreciates that. Until someone in the United States starts articulating a positive vision with policies to engender some hope for the future--healthcare for everyone, housing as a human right, SERIOUS action on climate change--the far right will keep winning. They're the only ones with ideas.

Now is the time to reach out to your liberal friends to help them understand that this is not a fluke, but the system working as designed. This failure by the Dems didn't come out of nowhere. Lots of us on the left saw this coming a mile away, and can help make sense of it. They're flailing and looking for an explanation. We have that. Help them understand. Help them see that we don't HAVE to live like this. We don't have to put up with only being given a sliver of political power every 4 years, with the threat of fascism hanging over our heads. The people at the top--the donor class, campaign managers, and beltway lanyard bros--aren't worth your time. But your mom or friend who voted for Kamala and is devastated and confused by the loss of the popular vote definitely IS worth your time. Those people can be comrades. Give them a chance. Reach out and listen to their frustrations and concerns. Don't be smug--be sympathetic. Talk to them about why they think this happened. Offer your perspective. Ask them why the Democrats raised over a billion dollars and still lost the popular vote. Ask if those might be connected. Ask why progressive voter initiatives--protecting abortion, sick days, wages increases, etc.--outperformed the Democratic presidential candidate so much in so many places. Ask what they think that means about the state of the electorate; does it mean most of America really is irredeemably evil? Or could it maybe mean something else? Ask if they really think Kamala Harris and "nothing really needs to change" is the best we can do, or the message most people need to hear. Help them see that it isn't. Help them see that a better world is possible. Help them get organized. This is your chance.

This should be a signal for american liberals that the democratic party is not a viable option anymore. Look at what happened, a total defeat, the republicans control both the house and senate in addition to having elected someone who according to your own law is a convicted felon.

Do you still want to cling to the democratic party as it keeps on recycling the same impotent strategy over and over again magically expecting a different result?

For anyone talking with trans friends or loved ones, here's a good resource @marcie@lemmy.ml prepared.

Edit: Replaced list with a link to Cowbee's "Read Theory, Darn it!" Introductory Reading List on Marxism-Leninism as it's easier to update one post than constantly edit all copy-pasted lists every time I make a change (I can never finish projects lol).

I think we can use this to put the nail in the coffin of arguments about stalling or harm reduction. I think even people who find that convincing as a concept would have to concede that they've ridden that horse as far as it can carry them. It seems self evident that this is not a working strategy at this point.

So if you're talking to a progressive/lib ask them what their plan was once they stalled as long as they could. Because they have.

Is there a way to force liberals to reckon with all the stuff they just stopped caring about the day Biden became president? Like the camps of migrants? A lot of them went full border wall with Biden. Now they're probably going to start caring again.

All I have to say is

good to remind people: Trump didn't win this, Harris lost this. Her turnout was lower than Biden's by 15 million votes. Trump's own turnout was less than in 2016, but the drop was smaller, iirc (I'd love to add a source for this), and I've heard some anecdotes suggesting that the reaction in Trump country has been surprisingly tame for having won an election (love to have sources for this too).

I don't think the main takeaway from this election is that most Americans love whatever Trump represents to them. Harris just did not win a lot of people's votes.

Comrades in the Pacific Northwest might be interested in my post from last week, opening discussion about a socialist movement originating in and focusing on Cascadia: https://hexbear.net/comment/5576727

There are flaws, but rhetorically it should be liberal-friendly. We live in the most politically progressive region of the US, but we are constrained by U.S. federal politics. Perhaps we should develop a Cascadian identity of our own that better represents us. Getting your politics from CNN or MSNBC will never ever take you there (as has been thoroughly proven for three elections, how much harder can our states support Democrats?bits not enough).

Make some slide decks

You should organize your thoughts into slide decks that you can use to keep you organized and have evidence on hand to make your point, instead of having to scrounge up a screenshot from your downloads folder when you need it.

Socialist education is complex in the imperial core. You kinda need to understand like 8-12 different concepts at once before it all clicks (and even then someone may not fully agree at that point, it just starts making sense). Slides will help you lay all that out, and that sort of structure will make it easy for someone to digest as well, since you'll be able to specify what you will talk about when. Fewer tangents cause you can say "we are gonna talk about that coming up", so you can stay focused.

Your own arguments will sharpen up. There's definitely some lazy shit that's propagated on Hexbear/Twitter, and it'll start to become obvious where you have weak points when you start to structure your thoughts into a slide deck.

Get to the conversation

Trying to get a couple of people to sit down and take a lecture from you is borderline cringy, however the point is that right now, liberals are ready to learn. It shouldn't be hard to bring them to

"we agree on a lot: Trump bad and Democrats offer nothing except losing to Republicans, We need to do more about it."

followed by

"We've talked about socialism a bit in our conversation, but socialism is really a complex topic that it's taken me years to get a grasp on, it would be cool if we could sit down sometime and I can share what I know. I want to get us on the same page so we can start working on some political decisions together.".

These real life discussions will make you razor sharp in a way that posting online can not. Keep it interesting, add a bit of humor, and make it look nice. You should be able to educate people that you want to work with using this resource you craft for yourself (it's ideal to develop the slides yourself).

People do not actually want to educate themselves, and if you aren't doing it, CNN and the NYT are instead.

The road to hell is paved with "lesser evils".

I have come across a somewhat uncomfortable scenario more than once this past week that I need some advice on from non-white folks here as a white woman in real-world organizing/activist spaces that do not necessarily lean very far left. I do not know how to approach BIPOC folks in these spaces (or even just in the general public I’ve encountered) espousing the virtues of voting Kamala Harris. I feel like @Angel@hexbear.net’s response to this in here is absolutely the correct perspective, but…is that even my place to say? I do not want to tell any non-white person how to express their frustrations and especially not as a white person, but…voting for Kamala was not it. It was never going to be it. I heard the same things back in the Obama days, too, and we have the benefit of hindsight now to tell us how poorly that goes. But I feel like I can’t be the one to say it. Is that the correct way to handle stuff like this? I feel very stuck.

Important Bsky post laying out that the Dems are cold war fossils and HATE their base.

https://bsky.app/profile/sovereignbeast.bsky.social/post/3ladyvif5vi2c

I've been trying to figure out how to innoculate/poison the rhetoric in use that gets people to go along with whatever liberal/conservative talking heads set as an agenda for discourse.

Deconstructing rhetoric, analysis of media narratives - "media literacy" - more generally. I need a really fast way to read people into that frame such that they are immediately deonstructing narratives as soon as they feel empowered to do so.

I basically want to utterly snuff out the average person's credulity towards people who are seeking power or modelling behavior from a highly visible place.

In order for things to get better, people have to have the tools they need to distrust power. That needs to be paramount, over anything else. Once you have people going "oh wow that's kinda bullshit" rather than uncritically entering a receptive state and parroting what the guy on their screen told them to say and think, a lot of the work will just get done on its own

We really need to be poisoning the rhetorical space as much as possible. I need something that devalues propaganda the same way capital is trying to use AI to devalue art. I need something that poisons the dataset.