Comment by jmyeet
13 hours ago
This is an example of taking the wrong lesson from history.
The lesson from the last 20 years is that voters consistently vote to people who speak to their interests and their problems. The biggest electoral landslide in this time is Obama in 2008 and second place isn't even close. Obama ran as a progressive. He didn't govern as one but that's not really the point. Although it's a big part of the reason of why we're here now.
There has (now) been a 50+ year trend of declining living conditions and real wages. People are getting loaded up with debt essentially to make wealthy people even wealthier. Everything has been getting worse.
This was the turning point of the 2016 election. Trump's talk of being an outsider (he isn't), draining the swamp (he didn't) and talking to actual voter concerns was what propelled him to the nomination. And the victory because Hilary Clinton was such a dogshit bad candidate who thought she could win running as a generic corporate Democrat. You know who else run with populist messaging? Bernie Sanders. A nontrivial number of people who voted for Bernie in the primaries voted for Trump in the general. This might confuse you if you think of this as a purely Democratic-Republican divide. It wasn't and it isn't.
So why do farmers keep voting for Trump even though he now has a record of screwing them over? Because he speaks to their interest and their problems where Democrats don't talk to them at all.
2024 was a textbook example of how to intetnionally run a campaign to lose the biggest lay up election in history. No real policies. Ordinary people do not care about tax credits for small businesses. That doesn't help anyone who is struggling to afford rent and food.
So you can say "you made your bed now lie in it" to the farmers but does that help you? Does that help the country? The Democratic Party is complicit in everything that's happened by their intentional inaction and choice to lose.
Obama did not run as a progressive, lol.
Much of the rest of this is equally ahistorical. Living conditions and wages haven't gotten worse over the past 50 years.
Were you in high school or elementary then?
Obama ran on “hope” and “change” very foofy stuff. Ultimately you may be able to support your position by virtue of his saying very little at all.
Wages have in fact fallen for the majority of people in real terms.
You must be young because nobody who lived through his campaign would say that.
He was anti-war. In 2007-2008. Only a few years when the majority of Democrats voted in favor of the Iraqi War Resolution, something that helped sink Hilary Clinton's 2008 bid. He ran on universal healthcare. He ran on renewable energy. He ran on increased LGBTQ rights.
He won Iowa by 9 doing this. To a war hero. Kamala lost by 13. To a convicted felon who had a track record of screwing over farmers.
> when the majority of Democrats voted in favor of the Iraqi War Resolution
The majority of Democrats in the Senate voted in favor (29-21). In the House a much larger majority voted against (81-126) the resolution.
A total of 7 Republicans voted against the resolution. Between both chambers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_for_Use_of_Milit...
>He won Iowa by 9 doing this. To a war hero.
He won Iowa by 9 due to the fact that the war in Iraq was incredibly unpopular and the economy was imploding.
Completely agree. Trump is selling the wrong solutions, but many people hear a truth when he tells them they are getting screwed. Democrats insist that business as usual is great and simply extort voters: "It votes for a broken healthcare system, a broken electoral system and increasing income inequality or it gets the orange fascist again."
Biden / Harris also essentially offered voters the Trolley Problem. If you don't pull the lever Trump will fund genocide. If you do pull the lever, we will also fund genocide, but maybe less genocide.
If your campaign can be described as an instance of a classic ethical dilemma, maybe the problem isn't the voters? At the very least, if Democrats 2024 campaign rhetoric is to be believed, funding genocide was more important to them than maintaining U.S. democracy.
> The lesson from the last 20 years is that voters consistently vote to people who speak to their interests and their problems
This is false. Trump did not spoken to their problems.
He spoken to their hate, to they wish to harm other people. He is a crook and that appealed to them - they want to steal like him.
They voted for Trump, because they like seeing abuse. That was super clear, if you actually listen to what they say.
The lesson is not for me, the lesson is for these farmers who will go bankrupt, lose their farms and land, and commit suicide in some quantities of each. Perhaps don't trust someone who only tells you what you want to hear, and yet never delivers. Most unfortunately, the lesson will fall on deaf ears while we all carry on. A cautionary tale, for sure. Sometimes we trust the wrong people. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
> So you can say "you made your bed now lie in it" to the farmers but does that help you? Does that help the country?
If there are less voters like this over time, yes, I put forth that will help the country (~2M 55+ voters age out every year, ~5k per day). Whether the country is worth saving, we can save for another thread. If someone won't change their mind, nor their vote, you've arrived at an impasse. You can only wait for time to work. Again, very unfortunate.
> The Democratic Party is complicit in everything that's happened by their intentional inaction and choice to lose.
"They made me do it." is not an argument. You vote for the chainsaw, you get the chainsaw. My understanding was that conservatives held personal responsibility as a core belief. Am I mistaken? Better luck next election cycle.
I take no pleasure in discovering that this is reality. It brings me great sadness. "We must take the world as it is and not as we would like it to be." -- Maurice
No candidate is owed votes. Candidates must earn votes. If voters didn't vote for your candidate, your candidate failed. The voters didn't fail. The candidate did. And what we have in the modern Democratic Party is an intentional choice not to promise or do anything but to expect votes and simply say "Trump bad" (which he is). That's not a policy platform. And people, rightly, rejected it.
If that creates problems for you (and, let's face it, it creates problems for everyone but the billionaires at this point), you should direct your anger at the candidates not the voters, particularly when the candidate was dogshit with no policies.
Old people dying isn't going to solve this problem. They're being replaced by young (particularly male) voters who are disenchanted, disenfranchised, disempowered and disillusioned because they have nothing to hope for as society is crumbling around the and they have no future.
If you want more people to vote for your candidates, they have to offer them something. It's really that simple.
People not voting for someone who doesn't speak to their issues and offers them nothing is quite literally the least surprising and most predictable outcome.
> what we have in the modern Democratic Party is an intentional choice not to promise or do anything but to expect votes
Do people really believe this? That there are no policy programs from Democratic candidates? Nothing on healthcare, childcare, eldercare, education, housing, energy? Just no promises at all?
I ask because that is obviously false, but it seems to be a common misapprehension. I'm wondering what candidates could do beyond talking about their policies at length (which they do) that would get people to believe that they have policies.
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> If voters didn't vote for your candidate, your candidate failed. The voters didn't fail. The candidate did.
Voters aren't immune from failure. Voters fail when they stay home and don't bother to vote at all, when they remain ignorant/uneducated, when they vote for a party/team instead of the candidate, etc.
It's tempting to let voters off the hook when candidates lie to their faces but ultimately it falls on voters to be aware of the track record of the candidates, be educated on the issues, and use a little critical thinking. I certainly can't feel too bad for them when they reelect a candidate who already screwed them over once already. Everyone knows the old saying: "Fool me once, shame on... shame on you. Fool me... you can't get fooled again."
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