I wonder who’ll be next week’s Prime Minister?
Politics and Current Affairs
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`The solution is not to vote for Trump. the solution is for the Democrats to run on what their voters actually want. This is a big part of why Harris lost, she tried appealing to the right, and she saw a collapse in left-wing support as a result. Then she got fewer right-wing votes than Biden did for her troubles.
And yiz are blaming the voters and not Harris for that.
As an American who saw everything firsthand, the irony is that Harris was portrayed as “too liberal” and part of the reason she lost is that it was perceived that she was more concerned about liberal idealism than actually doing something about the economy and other more pragmatic concerns, and that tanked her among moderate voters.
Some perceived Harris as too liberal, and others didn’t think she was liberal enough. Welcome to the Democratic Party’s version of the Kobayashi Maru.
If you’re going to be labelled “too liberal” by the usual suspects no matter what you do, it’s a great opportunity to actually go for it and offer some policies that might actually help or even appeal to people. Instead they just meekly went “I’m not too liberal! Look, I hate trans people too uwu.” You’re never going to win at mud wrestling a pig.
EDIT: and they still don’t seem to have grasped that and think the problem is that they weren’t right wing enough. They’re never going to fuck you, my dudes.
The problem is that many working-class voters feel the Democrats have abandoned them, including unions. Those people helped the Dems win a lot, but now they feel they are too focused on “high ideals” and not helping them economically. Trump promising cheaper eggs went a lot farther than trans rights for many voters.
It’s okay to go full left, as long as you are including everyone.
Well yeah, true left policies would appeal to working people and unions. That’s the other problem with the Democratic party really. Trans rights shouldn’t be the radical part of policy, it should be a given. There should be worker’s rights, protecting the right to unionise, minimum wages etc. They’re not mutually exclusive and it’s a right wing/transphobes’ tactic to make people think so.
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But you’ve just said that criticising Starmer can only feed the right wing.
Nah, I’m not saying you can’t criticise him at all, just that it isn’t always helpful to parrot the right-wing attack points that the media carpet-bomb us with on a daily basis, because a lot of those are fairly hollow and meaningless.
He’s already made some significant mistakes since his term began (and has been rightly criticised for that), but he’s also been attacked over some dumb and irrelevant stuff, and a lot of people seem to be struggling to tell the difference.
And any time Starmer’s Labour gets criticised for things the right wing do like, we’re told that they have to do that stuff because it’s essential to appeal to the right wing voters in order to stop the Tories/Reform getting in.
That was true to some extent before the election, but I think it’s a lot weaker a defence now that they’re in power with a significant majority. If ever there was a time to break away from those ideas and try and do something genuinely different for the politics of this country, it’s now.
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Well yeah, true left policies would appeal to working people and unions. That’s the other problem with the Democratic party really. Trans rights shouldn’t be the radical part of policy, it should be a given. There should be worker’s rights, protecting the right to unionise, minimum wages etc. They’re not mutually exclusive and it’s a right wing/transphobes’ tactic to make people think so.
Messaging was a huge reason Harris tanked, especially with the economy. Trump talked about lowering egg prices and tariffs. It was stupid shit, but it connected. She never really had any strong statements. She should have been talking about how Trump tanked the economy, and it was the Dems who were bringing it back to life. Talk about what she is going to do to continue the growth. Give the people something that appears solid, even though it’s probably bullshit.
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`The solution is not to vote for Trump. the solution is for the Democrats to run on what their voters actually want. This is a big part of why Harris lost, she tried appealing to the right, and she saw a collapse in left-wing support as a result. Then she got fewer right-wing votes than Biden did for her troubles.
And yiz are blaming the voters and not Harris for that.
As an American who saw everything firsthand, the irony is that Harris was portrayed as “too liberal” and part of the reason she lost is that it was perceived that she was more concerned about liberal idealism than actually doing something about the economy and other more pragmatic concerns, and that tanked her among moderate voters.
Some perceived Harris as too liberal, and others didn’t think she was liberal enough. Welcome to the Democratic Party’s version of the Kobayashi Maru.
If you’re going to be labelled “too liberal” by the usual suspects no matter what you do, it’s a great opportunity to actually go for it and offer some policies that might actually help or even appeal to people. Instead they just meekly went “I’m not too liberal! Look, I hate trans people too uwu.” You’re never going to win at mud wrestling a pig.
EDIT: and they still don’t seem to have grasped that and think the problem is that they weren’t right wing enough. They’re never going to fuck you, my dudes.
The problem is that many working-class voters feel the Democrats have abandoned them, including unions. Those people helped the Dems win a lot, but now they feel they are too focused on “high ideals” and not helping them economically. Trump promising cheaper eggs went a lot farther than trans rights for many voters.
It’s okay to go full left, as long as you are including everyone.
The irony being that Harris was fucking terrible on trans rights as well.
This is one of the ultimate indicators of how the Democrats aren’t actually a left-wing party. The left is meant to be about economic and social liberation, making sure everyone can live comfortably. But it feels like the Dems would sooner ship every queer person off to a death camp than raise the minimum wage.
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I understand the argument. I’m saying that American voters are rejecting the argument and lecturing me on it won’t fix that.
Just to say – I’m not trying to lecture anyone on anything here, I don’t pretend to have all the answers but I think a robust conversation about these ideas is healthy and all to the good. But I wouldn’t ever want to come across as lecturing or hectoring and I apologise if I’ve crossed that line.
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The US has gone so far right that the options are right of centre or far right. While any moderate option is screamed down as “socialism”.
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The NYPD have a suspect for the CEO shooting and it seems he’s a reactionary nutbag. So good job weaponising those guys, Republicans!
According to one report, he played a violent assassination video game called ::gasp:: “Among Us”. Although venting would explain how he escaped New York so successfully. And actually, I would say there probably are transferable skills (or at least mindsets) in how to successfully be the Imposter in Among Us and how he killed the CEO. I guess he now just has to not look sus during the trial.
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More broadly, and to move it away from the personalised back-and-forth, I think what we’re really talking about here is an absolutist approach to policitcs rather than a consensus approach.
If I decided that I was only going to vote for a party that represented my interests and policy preferences precisely, I would probably never find that party (unless I started one myself) because large political groups don’t work like that – they end up agreeing policy through wider consensus.
Similarly, if legislators decided that they could only vote for legislation if it 100% represented their preferences, in every line and paragraph, then no legislation would ever get passed, because you couldn’t ever draft legislation that would fully satisfy everybody at the same time.
Those voters and legislators might feel proud that they had stuck to their principles, but nothing would get done.
Politics, when it works, tends to work through consensus rather than everybody feeling they’ve got exactly what they wanted. Does that mean you don’t always get everything you want? Of course. Does it mean you occasionally have to “hold your nose” and vote for the lesser of two evils? Yes, if you want the preferable outcome. But that’s a sensible decision if you want to have any influence over the direction in which politics moves.
Progressive voters deciding to withhold their vote and opt-out of the Democratic process absolutely plays into the hands of the other side, and allows politics to move in the opposite direction.
To be fair, I do understand Lorcan’s argument on a general level – that by supporting a supposedly-left party even when it moves away from everything it should represent, you encourage the direction they’re taking. There are fights about the directions of parties that will and should have an effect on elections. And I think generally, you can make the argument that sometimes, parties need to be made to understand that they’re going the wrong way by losing an election even when they still would’ve been the better alternative.
I think this argument could more easily be made in a US context if Trump wasn’t the alternative. With a “normal” Republican, as far as that’s a thing, it would’ve been more easily justifiable. It’d also make more sense if there was any hope of the Democrats getting the message and finally nominating one of their more leftist politicians in the future. But that is unfortunately very unlikely.
The whole thing is exascarbated by the two-party system. In Germany (and the UK, etc.), if I think the pabour party (SPD) sucks, I can either go further left (Die Linke), focus on ecological matters (Green Party), or now go even left-right-populist (Bündnis Sarah Wagenknecht). And my vote will still matter because that party will be in parliament, and quite possibly in a government coalition. In the US, you don’t get that alternative.
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I think this argument could more easily be made in a US context if Trump wasn’t the alternative. With a “normal” Republican, as far as that’s a thing, it would’ve been more easily justifiable. It’d also make more sense if there was any hope of the Democrats getting the message and finally nominating one of their more leftist politicians in the future. But that is unfortunately very unlikely.
The thing is that Trump is a symptom, not the problem. The US as a society has never really come to terms with race relations, which basically broke the Republicans when Obama got elected. Combine that with a refusal to properly support public services, the hollowing out of the middle class, the deliberate destruction of public education… You have a combination of an increasingly dysfunctional political system and people who are primed to flock to basically anything that offers a way out. The Republicans are 100% fine with a populist scumbag like Trump as soon as he can prove he can get votes.
Trump showed that there is no depth the Republicans won’t plumb if they can win an election – and the person who comes after him will be as bad, if not worse. Because there are no consequences for it.
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The thing is that Trump is a symptom, not the problem. The US as a society has never really come to terms with race relations, which basically broke the Republicans when Obama got elected. Combine that with a refusal to properly support public services, the hollowing out of the middle class, the deliberate destruction of public education… You have a combination of an increasingly dysfunctional political system and people who are primed to flock to basically anything that offers a way out.
Yeah, the latter points are the same reason why Le Pen has been so successful in France, and the AfD in parts of Germany. If people feel like the system isn’t working for them anymore, why should they give a fuck about keeping it in place. It’s a bit of a mystery to me though why this hasn’t led to the rise of a new left wing the way it has to a new right. I mean, it’s not a mystery in the US, for the reasons described above, but in Europe it’s more inexplicable. People seem to be entirely wrapped up in the narrative that it’s the unemployed and migrants fucking everything up, instead of turning to class warfare. ‘s weird.
Trump showed that there is no depth the Republicans won’t plumb if they can win an election – and the person who comes after him will be as bad, if not worse. Because there are no consequences for it.
After this? Yes, very much so. That’s another reason why him winning is way worse than just any Republican candidate winning.
As for Republicans leaving no depths unplumbed… let’s not ignore that the Republican establishment is terrified of Trump. He’s the genie they summoned without realising it, and they have no way of putting him back in the bottle. The Christian right is happy as a pig in the mud right now, yes, but I there’s big parts of the GOP quaking in their boots.
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People seem to be entirely wrapped up in the narrative that it’s the unemployed and migrants fucking everything up, instead of turning to class warfare. ‘s weird.
It’s a simpler narrative that has a bunch of stuff you can physically point to – all the foreign people working in visible sapces, more diversity on TV, and those are why things are bad, somehow. The Left-wing solution talks about systemic issues and other impersonal concepts that are harder to visualise. EDIT: And you can’t forget media complicity, where they’re more interested in making money than accurately representing the truth and will wither both sides a situation or actively side with the right because it’s more sensational. And there’s also the purchase of a lot more media outlets by right-wingers in recent years.
As for Republicans leaving no depths unplumbed… let’s not ignore that the Republican establishment is terrified of Trump. He’s the genie they summoned without realising it, and they have no way of putting him back in the bottle. The Christian right is happy as a pig in the mud right now, yes, but I there’s big parts of the GOP quaking in their boots.
I gotta say I’m pleasantly surprised that there was backlash against Matt Gaetz as Attorney General. And a lot of the older guard of the Republican party got purged in the runup to the presidential election, Trump pushed a lot of his cronies into senior positions in the party apparatus. So there’s definintely some membership still quaking in their boots over the Christian Right, but fewer now than 4 years ago and most of the rest are gonna be shutting the fuck up.
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It’s a simpler narrative that has a bunch of stuff you can physically point to – all the foreign people working in visible sapces, more diversity on TV, and those are why things are bad, somehow.
I don’t know, man, I mean, what’s easier to point to than “Look! A handful of super-rich guys have all the money!!!”
It’s hard to understand for me that they somehow managed to steer the discourse in a way that makes sure nobody talks about wealth disparity and re-distribution.
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Too many Americans treat the process of voting as something that you do on Election Day. In reality, the process of voting SHOULD involve researching the positions of all the candidate; not just what the television advertisements say, but the record of what those candidates have said and done previously, how (if they have prior political careers) they’ve voted previously on the issues that matter to you, what opinions they’ve expressed on those matters, what people whose opinion you respect have said regarding that candidate.
If most people had done even a minimal amount of research, they would know that most (if not all) of the claims that Trump, and the PACs that support him, have stated in TV and social media ads have no basis in reality. Instead, they’re waking up now to the fact that the proposed tariffs mean that WE are likely going to be paying higher prices for certain goods, and that his immigration policy means that costs will shoot up in everything from general construction to fruits and vegetables to child care/home health care to having your lawn mowed or snow shoveled.
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It’s a simpler narrative that has a bunch of stuff you can physically point to – all the foreign people working in visible sapces, more diversity on TV, and those are why things are bad, somehow.
I don’t know, man, I mean, what’s easier to point to than “Look! A handful of super-rich guys have all the money!!!”
It’s hard to understand for me that they somehow managed to steer the discourse in a way that makes sure nobody talks about wealth disparity and re-distribution.
Largely because the concept of wealth disparity and wealth redistribution is alien. Like they’ll argue that Bill Gates deserves his wealth because he built Microsoft up from nothing (ignoring the priveleged position he exploited to get his start), and that he’s using his fortune for philantrophy (ignoring that he’s expanded his personal fortune through that philanthophy, or that he’s one of the largest private owners of farmland in the US now and is using his books to push agricultural policies that benefit him, or that he literally prevented the Astrazeneca covid vaccine forumula from being released freely, arguing that facilities in the developing world weren’t up to the task of producing it). In a lot of ways it’s like describing water to a fish.
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There seems to be a couple of beliefs that run deep on the US that don’t over here:
I kinda get that when it comes to the US, because it’s so deeply connected to the American Dream and the vision Americans have of themselves. But how did this work so well over here? Look at the French, even after all these years of Macron’s neo-liberalism, they still aren’t really turning to the left (the left coalition’s success in the recent election is due to the election process, they lost the popular vote) and instead they’re about to succumb to LePen’s fascism. These are the people who invented the guilloutine, for God’s sake!
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