Comment by toomuchtodo
14 hours ago
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.
> Do people really believe this?
It's objectively true.
> That there are no policy programs from Democratic candidates?
Does increasing ICE funding count [1]?
> Nothing on healthcare, childcare, eldercare, education, housing, energy? Just no promises at all?
Literally none of those things. The Democratic Platform is "Trump bad" and to be a nicer, gentler face on fascism.
> I ask because that is obviously false
What policies do Democrats actually stand for?
This is so obviously true that you need look no farther than the NYC mayoral election. Zohran Mamdani came from nowhere to win the the Democratic primary on a fairly simple platform of universal childcare, cheaper food, faster and free buses and freezing the rent (on rent stabilized apartments). Those are all concrete policies. Less than one month into his administration and we hvave a pilot program for childcare [2].
And what was the Democratic Party response? Democratic Party leaders (eg Schumer, Jeffries, Booker) would not endorse him, despite him winning the primary. Some tepid endorsements came late. Instead the Democratic Party with a wink and a nod ran a spoiler candidate, Andrew Cuomo, who previous had to resign in disgrace from being governor after multiple allegations of sexual harassment.
Think back to what Kamala ran on. Not stopping the genocide, not even calling it a genocide (both positions of which were highly popular with the base, even more than a year ago), a tax credit for small business, having the "most lethal" (her words) military and an immigration plan that was indistinguishable from the Trump 2020 immigration plan, including building the wall that the Democrats had previously campaigned against. She mentioned "price gouging" one time. That was hugely popular because it was the one thing that went to the affordability crisis. But she never mentioned it again because Wall Street didn't like it. Nothing about healthcare or the cost of rent or education. Not a thing.
> I'm wondering what candidates could do beyond talking about their policies at length (which they do)
Who talks about affordability, housing, healthcare and inflation "at length"? There are a handful of Congresspeople who do (eg AOC) but it's not a party position and certainly none of the out 2028 presidential wannabes talk about it.
Here's a little test for you. Whenever they talk they'll usually say that someone (usually Trump) is bad. Maybe they'll say a certain situation is bad (eg high rents). Whenever a candidate or ap olitician does that, the very next thing out of their mouth should be a solution. "Yes rents are high and I'm going to tackle this by doing X, Y and Z." Every problem should be followed a solution. If you don't hear a solution, it's just empty platitudes.
But the Democratic Party doesn't do that. They don't like making promises because then they can't be held to promises they never made.
> ... that would get people to believe that they have policies.
Progressive policies are poular. Democratic pooliticians are not. One of my favorite examples of this is Missouri. Trump won the state by 19. There was a ballot initiative to increase the minimum wage, an obviously prograssive policy. It won by 15. So this progressive policy outperformed Kamala by 34 in a deep red state. Put another way, 17% of the voters who voted in 2024 in Missouri showed up to vote for Trump AND to increase minimum wage.
This isn't a messaging problem. The Kamala campaign spent over $100 million in Pennsylvania and didn't move the needle. It's a platform problem.
[1]: https://www.newsweek.com/cory-booker-ice-proposal-progressiv...
[2]: https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2026/01/20/...
> 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."
> Voters aren't immune from failure.
Hard disagree. Voters are never at fault. It is incumbent upon the candidate to give the voters something to vote for.
> ... they stay home and don't bother to vote at all
Because they had nothing to vote for. Candidate's fault.
So what you've touched on is what's called "lesser evil voting", an idea that it is the voter's responsibility to engage in harm reduction. For too long the Democratic Party has relied on this to do nothing by just being a gentler face on fascism. Some might say you're rewarding that behavior by turning up to vote for them anyway, even when they offer you nothing. Millions stayed home in 2024 because they were offered nothing. That's the only power voters had and they exercised it. And I said at the time that the Democratic Party will learn nothing and change nothing as a result of a devastating loss in the easiest lay up of all time.
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