I’ve been voting. Doesn’t seem to work.
It only works in aggregate. Like how a drop of water won’t quench anyone’s thirst, but a 20 gallon barrel generally will.
This is why I hate group projects
One person puts in all the work
Five people don’t
Everyone fails
:) :) :) :) :)
(please kill me)
One thing I learned early in my academic career was that if I wanted a good grade on a group project it was easier to just do everything myself.
The sooner I can fuck off to the middle of nowhere and not deal with any of you anymore the better.
I thought the system was to dump the barrel out at the top of a hill so you can proclaim how much you’re doing for the thirsty person at the bottom.
Trickle down, but for voting too!
Oh, and I guess that’s what Trump literally did with the water in California, except they were different hills altogether.
Thats piss in that barrel, not water. We are not a society thats content to just leave everyone else alone if they arent affecting you.
It only works in aggregate.
It just plain does not work. Study: Congress literally doesn’t care what you think
pugjesus,
Are you proposing that the voice of individuals is being represented well against the voice of wealthy donors/business owners? That doesnt seem realistic, right?
Did you not fucking read the article
I read a lot of the “fucking” article (your words). It attempts to disprove a number of studies at once with flimsy analysis. The conclusion of their line of reasoning is that the will of the people is being represented just fine in congress. Seems false on the face of it to any observer of congress’s actions, and the events of the last election. Hence my question. Did YOU read the article.
It attempts to disprove a number of studies at once with flimsy analysis.
… it only rebuts one study, and it does so by citing three others.
So you didn’t read the article. Or even skim it.
The conclusion of their line of reasoning is that the will of the people is being represented just fine in congress.
Lord.
It’s mitigation.
Show me the part where it mitigated giving the entire government to nazis
Took longer
Not exactly a ringing endorsement.
“This is super important but will ultimately fail and you’ll have to shoot the Nazis anyway.”
mit·i·ga·tion noun
the action of reducing the severity, seriousness, or painfulness of something.
“the emphasis is on the identification and mitigation of pollution”
Are there not Nazis in charge of our government? How was that at all mitigated and not just delayed?
One of those things where both
- Nonvoters who complain that Democrats aren’t doing enough to protect them are exactly the kind of entitled twats who attack what meagre defenses we have against fascism, and then whine (blaming those same defenses they themselves worked to undermine) when fascism attacks them.
AND
- Dems who do nothing in this period are inex-fucking-scusable, if predictably adhering to their norms-based civility politics schtick which plays so well with suburban white folk; and Dems in general are only interested in reform insofar as public opinion forces them to support it, and not an inch further.
are true.
Everyone is constantly making excuses for the Democrats, but if a political party had zero power except for four months out of forty fucking years you’d think we’d at least try to replace them.
I wrote up a big long thing and deleted it, because fuck that.
The country doesn’t want the change we want. Not even the Dem base, not when the ads start blaring and snarl words start getting tossed around. Even significantly left-leaning states like Cali and Washington regularly reject ballot initiatives for progressive measures.
That the Dems, milquetoast and moderate as they are, and as broad a coalition as they make, had power for 4 months out of 40 years is an aberration caused only by the massive fuck-ups of the Bush administration.
Correctly speaking, the Dems probably should’ve had none.
Yeah, I’ve come to the same conclusion: This country is fucked and there’s no way I’ll fit in anywhere.
I have two modes, really.
-
“Things are bad, but they will get better.” Looking at the past, things were immeasurably worse. That they’re still incredibly dogshit now is not a condemnation of our trajectory for all eternity (though I do suspect after this last election, there will need to be a tumultuous ‘correction’, civil rights or civil war style, to return to even the meagre rate of improvement we had before). 2025 is not 1925, and certainly not 1825 or 1025. Technological advancement aside, we have made incredible gains in the history of human civilization, and there’s no reason that it should stop now, despite the seeming power of the elites. Relatively speaking, we are immensely educated and powerful compared to past generations of the working class. Our tools of communication are far further removed from elite control - though that should be interpreted with a touch of ‘damnation by faint praise’. We may feel helpless and hopeless, but they are only feelings - feelings always pass, rightly or wrongly; and reality always asserts itself when the two collide.
-
“Holy fuck, what do you mean that by the time I’m in my 90s things might be slightly better? Assuming there isn’t a half-century detour that makes things worse first, Reconstruction style??? And it’s all reliant on the dipshits I meet in day-to-day life??? I’m either shooting myself or shooting up, fuck this”
I lost that first attitude when Trump won the first time.
And even when I’m around people who ostensibly share my political views I still feel like an outsider for a bevy of other reasons. “Did you see that funny commercial?”
“No I don’t see any commercials. Ever. “
“Oh man the halftime show!”
“Didn’t see that either.”
If my biology didn’t make a persuasive argument I’d swear I wasn’t human.
-
The modern Democratic party fights harder against its own “base” than they do against the opposing party. People still came out in droves to vote for them despite that but their dedication to complacency in a system that is failing everybody but the rich left enough people behind to tip the scales. The Dems have enabled this and anybody who expects them to save us from it is delusional.
Tens of millions of people voted for the Democrats. Do they not get to complain?
The people complaining hardest are the ones who called democrats genocidal fascists and refused to vote. This site was filled to the brim with anty Democrat posts at election time, now it’s filled with “why aren’t they doing anything??” Posts, it’s the same people
TBF I voted extra hard for Harris and I’m still wondering why Democrats are voting yes on Trumps cabinet picks and why an 83 year old Bernie Sanders is out drumming up the masses while Hakeem Jefferies tells Jon Stewart that we’re all too stupid to know how amazing Democrats are.
ALSO, Democrats don’t seem to give a shit about the genocide, including you. So IDK what the fuck you expect me to say. I voted for harm reduction because I knew exactly what Trump was going to do, but that doesn’t mean I gave up all of my rights to complain about the shit job that Democrats do.
And over one third of voters didn’t vote for anyone. This is talking about them:
https://www.environmentalvoter.org/updates/2024-was-landslidefor-did-not-vote
Realistically, it’s the Democrats who failed the voting public. Their campaign of “We offer you nothing!”, did not seem to drag in very many undecided voters. You and I might be very politically active, but the majority of Americans are not.
You need to give them a reason to go out and vote. A lot of people have very short attention spans, and easily forgot how bad Trump was the first time around and shaming the people for their shortsightedness is not how you win elections.
Biden was the “Nothing will essentially change” candidate. We finally pushed him out, but Harris only had 2 weeks to come up with “Something”. That something? A small tax credit for small businesses that was DOA in the house. It was probably why they didn’t promise anything else - if a TAX CUT isn’t passing the GOP controlled parts of congress, what the heck could Harris promise that would?
Keep telling yourself the democrats failed and somehow they are now suffering, they aren’t, they’ll get to take 4 years off and enjoy their wealth, it’s the voters who tried to punish the dems by not voting who are the morons
The results at my last city vote was depressing. We had 20% turn out. Twenty! And we have mail-in by default here
Thankfully the people who did vote voted for the positive changes we need but it’s not hard to imagine how easily 20% of the population can be easily swayed
Uncommitted performative boTh sIDEs grandstanding couch sitters who drank a bit too much right-wing wedge-driving vodka:
fuck it. I voted dem every election and they did fuckall. We got obamacare, whoop deee doo. we have to buy insurance now. fat load of good that did.
Fuck the dems. I’m leaving and voting for some other party, and you should too. campaigning for a third party should start right fucking now, so the dems can’t say “oH, ThE TiMe FoR SuPpOrTiNg a ThIrD pArTy IsN’t 5 MoNtHs BeFoRe An ElEcTIoN!” Fuck you, you goddamned fake ass left party.
Yes! This is the time to campaign for a third party, or put forward more progressive Democrats, or take a short-sighted meaningless stance on a genocide being done by someone else somewhere else.
However, 2 years from now, in November, you need to vote for the candidate that is most able to win against the fascist ass-kissing trump sycophant, even if they aren’t a 100% match for your political views or objectives.
Edit: judging from the votes on this comment, we’re gonna lose again because half of you refuse to learn anything from history that (metaphorically) happened yesterday.
or put forward more progressive Democrats,
Beat this drum.
SHOW UP TO THE FUCKING PRIMARIES.
I remember it being fucking dead in my polling place back in 2020 for the primaries compared to the general.
Yeah, primaries are depressing.
Also, at least in my state (a red, semi-regressive state) you can register for and vote in the primaries completely by mail.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries
Joe Biden won that primary with a mere 20 million votes. Bernie had 10, out of a potential voter pool of 87 million.
Angry ML shouting incoming
The crowd that didn’t vote for Kamala have mysteriously disappeared from their soapbox and went into hiding…
Da.
Hi I voted for Stein
Well least you voted. If only 30 mill more decided to vote even third party it would have shook things up. They didn’t even care enough about country to do that.
We all voted for Biden even though we KNEW he would be worthless but that’s who was forced on us…and then for four years he ABSOLUTELY REFUSED UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE to do his Number One Job of defending the US against domestic terrorism and insurrection.
ABSOLUTE REFUSAL.
And then his successor campaigns as a GWB acolyte and gives vague, rambling non-answers to very simple questions while telling the constituency to go fuck themselves.
You figure it out
even though we KNEW he would be worthless
Lol. So many people who paid absolutely no attention to his accomplishments as president crying online about how he did nothing.
So frustrating to people who actually paid attention. Guy was the most progressive president in pretty much all of our lives.
Could he have done more? Sure. And he should have. But for you to come on here and post that he was worthless is a condemnation of you, not Biden.
But yes. Blame the party that always respects the Constitution and has a voting history proving they regularly support the middle/lower classes while ignoring the party that regularly takes a shit on the Constitution, supports literal traitors, and only votes in favor of the wealthy.
You can’t cling to the current Dem establishment and also expect them to handle Trump and maga. They can’t and they won’t-- it’s been 10 years.
Maga is organized and motivated, we need to organize and motivate the rest of the country, it’s very hard to get motivated around neocon candidates.
Every election since Trump 1 has been the same thing: quietly accept the inadequacies of the Democratic party and let maga walk all over the country while you watch half of the country get swept away by misinformation. People are exhausted trying to wait it out. If we are going to fix this country we need to seize control now, not waiting for the next election cycle.
Obviously you’re transphobic genocide lovers who demand corporate ownership of the meats of production.
(/s obvs)
Good thing you added that /s or else I’d have to get my billionaire sponsors to test out their space lasers on you.
Even when Democrats are in power, they still don’t do anything hardly at all. I have voted Democrat for a long time now, but what we really need to do is get rid of First Past the Post voting in America, as it would really light a fire under them to be effective or be replaced.
Republicans purged 3.5 million voters likely to vote Democrat from rolls in 2024.
And tens of millions of Democrats didn’t vote.
Even when Democrats are in power, they still don’t do anything hardly at all.
They get plenty done. They just don’t get everything YOU want done.
Do yourself a favor and Google Biden’s accomplishments as president. He actually got a lot of good shit done. But Democrats are always held to a higher standard, so people like to pretend they didn’t do anything because they expect them to do everything.
Yes, Biden accomplished a lot…that was then subsequently undone by Trump.
Should Biden get credit for it still? Sure. He tried and it was a calm 4 years we had with him, minus inflation.
Did it make a fly’s fart worth of difference? No, because much of that action was done through executive actions.
Biden did very little to support actual, systemic change to our voting systems, protections against executive power abuse, etc. He spent 4 years working hard to have his work mostly undone in a month.
We don’t need incremental growth anymore. We’ve ignored systemic problems so long now that drastic change is needed. Systemic problems in education, voter rights protections, LGBTQ+ protections, higher education (he did try to kinda address this), racism, etc. Many of these things Biden didn’t do anything to change that were long lasting, legislative changes.
These problems aren’t just on Biden, though. They require the whole party to move as one progressive unit and not capitulate to this “both sides” and “moderate” bullshit. The Republican party is regressive and obstructionist and in order to combat it, we must take bold moves to show how green the grass is on the other side. Not “nothing will fundamentally change”.
You can’t berate people into voting the way you want. That is the lesson the DNC needs to learn if they actually want to win.
Social media trolls could do to realize that too.
As I recall, there were fuck-tons of blowhard tankie trolls berating everyone and accusing anyone voting democrat of being “gEnoCiDe sUpPoRtErS” and that everyone should either vote for dipshit unknown, untested, 3rd party clowns, or not vote at all.
So… I took a look around and yeah… there’s no high road for you here.
And you insisted that they had no value and weren’t worth listening to anyway so fuck em
Well, at least we know now that you’re capable of being correct about some things on occasion- however rare that occasion might be. So… at least you have that going for you.
I don’t know why you went out of your way to use the mocking “gEnoCiDe sUpPoRtErS” while, when, an actual genocide was being committed. You can disagree with the strategy of not voting for genocide supporters in elections, and there may even be compelling reasons when the alternative is trump, but mocking the people who prioritise not supporting genocide isn’t a very high moral ground in my opinion.
More than attempting for third parties to win, the whole “conditioning the vote on an end to genocide” was attempted at forcing the democrat administration to end the genocide under threat of losing the elections, not “let’s make sure that X third person gets elected”. The democratic party was clear: we will not compromise in our support of genocide even if it costs us the elections. So they lost.
I mock it because before the genocide in Gaza, there was another genocide that NONE of you gave a shit about. Also, before the conflict in Palestine, NONE of you cared to know that there was shit going on over there for decades. I’d even go so far as to wager that most of you couldn’t have pointed to Palestine on a map prior to last October- and some of you probably STILL can’t.
So, forgive me for recognizing crocodiles tears when I see them. Because I’m not buying the bullshit. You for sold on a propaganda campaign.
I mock it because before the genocide in Gaza, there was another genocide that NONE of you gave a shit about.
Care to elaborate?
Is even go so far as to wager that most of you couldn’t have pointed to Palestine on a map prior to last October
Even if you were right, what’s the point of that argument? “Increased sensibility to genocide as a consequence of people being able to learn from it from non-US-controlled outlets and social media because of the new availability of smartphones all over the world” negates being able to care about genocide? People 10 years ago couldn’t open their smartphones and see live footage of children being bombed to death by Israel, and being able to see that despite the mass media apparatus in the US being entirely pro-Israel is a new thing. Surely more people finding out about the genocide isn’t a bad thing?
Care to elaborate?
The fact that you even had to ask illustrates my point.
Surely more people finding out about the genocide isn’t a bad thing?
Finding out about genocide, and using as leverage in an election where the collapse of democracy is on the table are not even remotely similar.
Again. Most of you didn’t give two shits about what was happening over there- and then suddenly you all cared so much that it was worth sacrificing your own country to save another that, as mentioned- most of you hardly gave a shit that it even existed a year ago.
Shameful and pathetic.
The fact that you even had to ask illustrates my point
There is more than one ongoing genocide, it’s just that the one in Palestine is the one the US is most obviously funding and supporting, which makes it relevant to USian politics.
Finding out about genocide, and using as leverage in an election where the collapse of democracy is on the table are not even remotely similar.
Finding out about genocide and being able to tell your representatives that you won’t vote them if they go on genociding people because that doesn’t represent you, seems pretty coherent and moral to me.
suddenly you all cared so much that it was worth sacrificing your own country
I’m not USian btw, I’m not sacrificing my own country. Arguably the ones sacrificing the country are the ones putting only unelectable candidates who run a campaign of genocide against literal fascists. If the Trump administration was so patently fascist and the Democrats, with full presidential power (and immunity as proven by Trump), did nothing to stop them, the fault is every bit as much in the Democrat camp as in the Republican.
Refuse to act against fascists while in government -> run a campaign on genocide and the “most lethal armed forces in the world” with a non-electable candidate changed 3 months before the election -> lose elections to fascists -> blame the voters
If you’re not from here, then you’re not who I’m talking about and are just here to play contrarian.
I don’t entertain contrarians.
Removed by mod
So. You admit to being a troll? That certainly makes things a lot easier.
I’m so tired of this. Obviously more people need to be more politically active, but there’s a lot of issues occurring that we just don’t talk about enough here.
Being politically active while being a responsible and well-informed voter takes time. The first without the other two is just how you make more Republican voters. When you consider how much a lot of people are working and the other struggles they’re facing it really isn’t surprising that a lot of people are not that informed or active. Let’s also not pretend that one party doesn’t go out of its way to make it more difficult for people to vote either.
Other the other side of the issue there’s a myriad of issues that have made our current democrats less motivated to be an opposition party. Also, let me just point out that a party should never sit back and watch simply because they are not currently in full control of congress at the given moment. The Republicans have led by example on this repeatedly. Even when they aren’t in control they continue to be aggressive, to be disruptive, to keep a media presence. Democrats can do this too. They need to.
This isn’t to say that Democrats are completely to blame. There’s a lot of shitty people in this country and there are people out there that can do a bit more than what they’re doing to support the cause. This is just to say that Democrats share some responsibility and some of the burden here.
Also I just want to put this out there. I know people are scared, people are angry, people are upset, but the blame game isn’t doing anyone any good. It is important to understand what went wrong, but spending all our time pointing fingers is simply wasting energy.
True; they should be spending their time arming up and hitting the firing range
