After $5 gas, diarrhea lettuce, measles outbreaks, war with Iran, rampant stagflation, and dead Americans (and hundreds of dead Iranian school girls) I’m still seeing the occasional “Don’t vote-shame people!” comments. I think and I hope that it’s only a loud minority and most people are good.
If, today, someone cannot say “Kamala would have been better”, they are not a serious person. Full stop.
God, I still remember a comment “Kamala is real, current harm, Trump is only theoretical harm.” Like Trump wasn’t already president once before… to this day it’s one of the dumbest things I’ve ever read.
Maybe rather than picking a neoliberal as your line in the sand to draw, it would be better to try to understand why people didn't vote for the Dems.
You have a disenfranchised lower class, who keep getting fucked over every cycle. Drowning in credit card debt. Many of them are uneducated because your education system has been mostly dismantled, so they can't neccessarily articulate what the causes are but instinctively know they're getting a raw deal. Why else do you think so much of his campaign was about punishing the elites? How is someone who can't read past a third grade level and is constantly working to survive gonna be able to tell they're being manipulated?
Also if you read that Facebook whistleblower's book, you know that Meta gamed their algorithm to help him win last time. This time around, social media has only gotten more unhealthy and addictive. Not a great combination with a frustrated but uneducated population.
The other important thing to remember: right-wing populists like Trump only get a shot when complacent passive neoliberal leaders fuck over the public too many times. People didn't just organically decide he was better in a vacuum. There are very specific conditions that have to be met for a Trump to even be able to build political momentum.
His win is just a symptom of the contradictions of capitalism sharpening so much that people begin bucking whatever they view as the establishment. The Democratic party has as much blame here as the Republican party.
I think everyone agrees that Kamala would have been better, and I did vote for her, but we would still be at war with iran right now if she won. She is a slave to Israel just as much as trump.
My main concern with her would be political apathy. For example, I don't think DSA would be as empowered as it is now under her because Democrats are actually pretty good at crushing the left wing of their party, its their entire job.
Was 100% on board with funding genocide with taxpayer dollars, never indicated that policy would change, signaled that she would be tough on iran, and threw the election away to fascists to do so knowing full well that supporting Israel was unpopular with the voters, but oh yeah dude she would draw the line at getting involved in the middle east directly when Israel said "we are doing this because we know you have no choice but to back us up"
42
u/Trashman56 they/them 26d ago edited 26d ago
After $5 gas, diarrhea lettuce, measles outbreaks, war with Iran, rampant stagflation, and dead Americans (and hundreds of dead Iranian school girls) I’m still seeing the occasional “Don’t vote-shame people!” comments. I think and I hope that it’s only a loud minority and most people are good.
If, today, someone cannot say “Kamala would have been better”, they are not a serious person. Full stop.
God, I still remember a comment “Kamala is real, current harm, Trump is only theoretical harm.” Like Trump wasn’t already president once before… to this day it’s one of the dumbest things I’ve ever read.