PhilipTheBucket

Bernie Sanders did that, and it did great. It wasn't enough to win, partly because the Democrats fucked him.

At this point, you'll have to contend with massive social-media operations which are working against and shaping the narratives that most of the country use as a substitute for news, to understand what's happening in the world. I think the time to be able to do it has passed, for a little while, without on-the-ground anti-electoral organizing on a massive scale.

See who you can find in your area. It's about to get real, I think.

All the people who were doing that are now pushing RCV or other election reforms that would make it realistic for third parties to be able to get all the way to winning. The third-party people who are running in FPTP elections are, almost universally, either attention-seekers or deliberate spoiler candidates. Bernie Sanders, when he was running, joined up with the Democrats instead of running as a spoiler candidate, because he's making an earnest attempt at making things better.

It doesn't really matter now because we've slipped one rung down the civilizational Maslow pyramid now, and are in for a fight to preserve the right in any capacity to elect who we want in power. But, whenever we make it back out to the other side of that, it'd be nice to remember to reconfigure the system so third parties can actually win, first, and then run third party candidates after that, not the other way around.

Sanders got fucked in 2016 and the Democrats who get nominated aren’t great and yes it’s partially the Democrats’ fault they got so few votes in 2024. I strongly disagree that it’s chiefly their fault, but that horse is out of the barn now, and also the barn is on fire now and connected to the house with the children inside.

There will be some incredible shit going down in the next few years. It’ll be a challenge to have any sort of elections in 2028 that have anything non-Republican in any position to win anything. I don’t think it will happen.

If you want to have a conversation about how we get left-wing values to win in future elections, start with how we fight to preserve basic freedoms like elections that don’t have Trump’s election integrity squad in charge of them, and free speech online, and the military not being used against American protestors.

I hope I’m wrong but I think some real shit is going to go down real soon. I don’t think we should assume elections are going to be normal and then plan from that assumption.

Blame can be shared.

If one person left a bunch of oily rags in my home, and then when they caught fire, someone else refused to fight the fire but in fact let it actively continue, then I can blame both people.

I think a lot of it hinges on what a “moderate” is, in the American political frame of reference, and whether one of those is good enough for most of the American people who don’t live in Washington or NYC to ever have a chance of living a decent life.

You’ve got a point, I guess, about some of it. But I still mostly stick by my statement that Hillary fucked it, when Bernie would have crushed it, on economic policy and sanity in our Israel policy among several other key issues where the majority of people feel very differently than the people in DC and on the news do.

What were her big accomplishments in the senate again?

Here's Bernie:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernie_Sanders#Legislation_2

I'm not against her because she is blue, or a lady. Those are both good things. I'm against her because she was the last wave of the Clinton-era conservatism that poisoned the Democrats and lost them supporters which led in large part to our current catastrophe. For more, see the source article.

My curiosity was just aroused because you blamed 8% inflation which hit every country worldwide and is related to how much companies want to charge individuals for private transactions, on US government spending on behalf of Ukraine, the total over all years of which added up to 1% of the federal budget for one year, and had nothing to do with either private individuals or companies. It's a staggeringly weird leap to make. Unless you were, say, trying to find a reason why aid for Ukraine would be a foolish thing for governments to do, and trying to make the case that it was hurting the individuals in those countries using some sort of moon-logic.

Usually, the government spending money domestically on weapons or whatever, and then giving the product away somewhere so we have to make more of whatever it is right away, stimulates the economy. Even aside from those other weird aspects of your decision to say that, it's also a backwards thing to say in terms of how government spending usually works.

Here's the median, in inflation-adjusted dollars:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/200838/median-household-income-in-the-united-states/

It bombed in 2022 and then went back up. It'll be higher in 2024 than it ever was, and it'll probably keep going up until anywhere from 0 to 2 years into Trump's presidency, and then it'll bomb again much harder as everything goes completely to shit. The normal cycle would be that it gets handed back over to a Democrat in 2028, he spends the first 2-3 years of his presidency fixing things from the previous Republican's disaster as happened in 2009-2012 and in 2021-2022, and then during the next election everyone blames that 2-3 years on the Democrat and says the Republicans are better with money.

We're about to go so far off the map that it seems unlikely for that cycle to happen this time, but that would be the normal cycle.

Biden wanting to stop supporting Israel is complete crap.

Yes, I agree.

It sounds like you missed the point of my message. Biden was awful on Israel. My point was that because Israel could become a liability for him, it got blown up on social media in a way where the legitimate and impassioned protest movement became a huge electoral issue for him. And, in the corners of social media where you hang out, it's all over social media, always in the face of everyone whose vote it might impact, and front of mind for you, every day, in a way that I'm guessing Occupy Wall Street or the protests against the Uyghur genocide were not. And then, when it was Kamala Harris, everything he'd done translated seamlessly over to her, with almost no loss of impact.

There's a whole other population of people for which inflation is that issue. They see it constantly on social media, it's always linked to ~~Biden~~ Kamala, and Trump is so much better. Trump will fix it. That one has a lot less validity than the Gaza criticism, but it has a lot broader appeal. And so, with that in their ear every day, it's not surprising that a lot of them didn't show up for Kamal Harris, or got suckered into voting for Trump thinking somehow that he'll fix it.

Left-wing social media could have blown up Biden's absolutely historic actions on climate change into the same magnitude of issue as Gaza was, and blown it up in everyone's ear all day every day, and heard about what a catastrophe Trump will be, but they didn't. Why is that? Because no one's paying for that message to get out there.

I'm not saying the Gaza protestors, or their cause, are fake. I'm saying that the way things got covered and represented on social media was artificially generated to hurt ~~Biden~~ Kamala, and it worked.

I think it's hilarious, if they think that writing nice articles about him will mean that he'll spare them.

He doesn't care. He just wants to hurt. And they're already in his crosshairs, whatever they do. At least if they stuck to their guns, they'd have a few allies among the other side.

Bernie would have won the fuck out of 2016.

Hillary almost won, and she had essentially nothing to bring beyond being blue, a lady, and continuing the status quo. On top of that she is too fake for politics, which is a high level of fakeness. Bernie would have been an upgrade to everyone who doesn’t work in DC.

How he would have done as president, I have no idea. But he absolutely would have won.

I’m usually the one defending the Democrats against whatever accusation, and I completely approve this message. It’s the 2016 DNC’s fault, and a lot of them are still around making equally bad and corrupt decisions.

The difference being that it takes the standpoint, “We need to take over the Democrats or make something better, so the world doesn’t burn.” It’s the similar but very different standpoint, “It’s the Democratic Party’s fault that the world is burning and I’m not helping until they get better” that is unhelpful.

Edit: https://lemmy.world/post/21721606