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Get organized. Join a Leftist org, find solidarity with fellow comrades, and protect each other. The Dems will not save you, it is up to the Workers to protect themselves. The Party for Socialism and Liberation and Freedom Road Socialist Organization both organize year round, every year, because the battle for progress is a constant struggle, not a single election. See if there is a chapter near you, or start one! Or, see if there’s an org you like more near you and join it, the point is that organizing is the best thing any leftist can do.
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Read theory. A good primer is Blackshirts and Reds. It will help contextualize what fascism is, what causes it, and how to stop it. I can offer a good introductory reading list regarding Marxism if you’d like, but this is a good starting point.
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Aggressively combat white supremacy, misogyny, queerphobia, and other attacks on marginalized communities. Cede no ground.
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Be more industrious, and self-sufficient. Take up gardening, home repair, tinkering. It is through practice that you elevate your problem-solving capabilities. Not only will you improve your skill at one subject, but your general problem-solving muscles get strengthened as well. Theory guides practice, which sharpens theory to be reapplied to better practice.
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Learn self-defense. Get armed, if practical. Be ready to protect yourself and others. The Democrats will not save us, we must save each other.
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Hey, I’ll probably delete my account soon because I shilled so hard for this campaign and it feels so gross. I knew day one enthusiasm was going to sink the dems and pushed back against the apathy as hard as I could. I was pretty devastated when kamala took the stage at the DNC and gave her support for, “a strong military” and talked about her gun or what ever. After that was just going through the motions and convincing myself I wasn’t crazy for not wanting trump to win this badly.
The way I see it now, and will remember as we go in the future the DNC offers nothing. That’s not fair, they do a lot of good for state and local governments but at a federal level, they will never be able to effect real change. Maybe it’s because the way the fed is setup or for what ever other reason. It’s not that the leadership has failed, it’s that they can’t win. I’ve hopped to lots of different possible solutions for Americans over the years and I guess there is one way out. Until we see liberals migrate away from the cities and take root in the land we will never have a government that represents them. That’s where the war will be fought. Until then, even if Trump doesn’t crown himself king asshole it’s the RNC’s game the DNC just resets the board.
They refuse to actually campaign and address people’s concerns. They gaslight, minimize, denigrate, guilt trip, and verbally abuse people and then are surprised Pikachu when no one is happy or motivated to vote for them.
“You owe it to your country to vote.” “You are a bad person/stupid/russian shill etc if you vote for anyone but Kamala.”
These things just stroke your ego and are otherwise thought terminating. They do not get votes. Like holy fuck, if you just listen to people’s concerns and talk with them, it tends to work.
But with Citizens united, campaigns focus around a capitalist spending strategy like it’s Election Christmas. Bernie Sanders, Stacey Abrams, and AOC all had what I’d call “authentic” campaigns, where they requested help with canvassing and phone calls before they requested donations. Like donations were fine, but most emails and texts were asking for workers, volunteers, and physical help. Those requests were completely absent from Kamala’s campaign.
The status quo just doesn’t want the common person to have political literacy. If they teach us how to canvas, then we’ll do it for someone who isn’t status quo. If they show us how to run for office, then we will just run ourselves like AOC did. They are in direct conflict with themselves because they are trying to suppress anything except status quo Dems.
This right here is why the Republicans won. All I see below me is finger pointing and blame tossing. Republicans have got their shit on lockdown. You guys can’t even figure out who to blame.
It’s easy to look like they “got their shit on lockdown” when they’re straight-up copying the fascist playbook.
The blame game isn’t helpful, though. Divide and conquer is from that same fascist playbook. Blaming anyone except the Republican establishment serves only to diminish their primary role in this situation, and further divide us from each other. We have to stop attacking fellow victims and put that blame squarely where it belongs.
They know exactly who is to blame. But that would involve some degree of self-reflection so, on with the show… i guess.
*woops misread the implication
Absolutely, we need to place blame where it belongs. Democrats fucked up bad, it is basically 2016 all over again
Everyone is terrible here. In the past I could forgive Republicans because “they didn’t get who he was.” They know and don’t care. Billionaires fighting each other over who gets hegemony is boring. This is their world and we just happen to live here.
It’s worse.
Like all political “analysis”, this one is just another bit of meaningless preaching.
Seems more like a boastful “I was right” from those that ensured they were right.
Maybe you should call on the candidate to have less bad positions than try to call on voters to support them despite their bad positions. For some reason ‘she’s electable if you vote for her’ seems to keep being a losing strategy.
Remember Primaries? Of course that would require the DNC not to turn out the lights when they hear something they don’t like.
“But you had one with Biden and he appointed Harris so you chose that!!!”
“I didn’t hear anyone calling for other candidates.”
That was a response I got from a guy when I brought up the botched primary all thanks to Biden’s hubris.
Like, no shit Sherlock, we couldn’t call for anyone else, there was no time!
Biden left his run so late they just appointed someone else and “that’ll do!”
And then called us naive idealists for wanting… Checks notes democracy when the democracy is at stake.
Block, block, upvote, scroll, upvote, block, upvote, upvote, block
In part, yes, but it’s a more complicated issue though. It’s a death by thousand cuts.
There’s also the whole doubling-down on the Israel-Palestine conflict, Twitter propping up the far-right everywhere it can, etc.
It’s pretty stupid of Dems to think that white conservative racists are going to vote for a black-indian woman? WHAT were they thinking?!!!
They were thinking exactly what they were paid to think.
Liberals all over Lemmy are having a genuine, threatening existential crisis right now and it’s so fucking hilarious. Like, I am laughing at them from the depths of my soul right now.
Imagine being a liberal, thinking this entire time that you have the correct worldview, you are a “good person” and on the “right side”.
And then reality comes crashing down on you. That must be genuinely traumatizing for people as weak as liberals.
Looks like the leftists were correct the entire time. Shocker.
Wow, you know empathy is free, right?
Nah, for some people empathy has the insurmountable cost of destroying the world view which puts them on top.
No leftist would be bragging about a Trump win. A leftist would be worried about the people who are in danger now. You’re not a leftist if this is your belief.
Their comment history is fucking insane. They appear to support accelerationism, so they got what they wanted.
Looked at the dem votes for the last few elections and it looked consistent except for biden. Who somehow got way more than normal.
2008 69 mil 2012 65 mil 2016 65 mil 2020 81 mil 2024 66 mil
Also the only white male in those years…
I had the same thought…
The Biden campaign offered something, notably student loan forgiveness, but both Clinton and Harris’s campaigns relied on the dumbfuck Pied Piper strategy that they would offer nothing to the voters other than being not-Trump.
That’s a dumb fucking strategy because there are fewer people that will vote Democrat as the lesser evil than will vote Republican just because Republican. They have to court people with policies they actually want.
And the absolute crazy thing is they tried this in 2016 and it failed, yet somehow had the balls to try again when it mattered more.
And the absolute crazy thing is they tried this in 2016 and it failed, yet somehow had the balls to try again when it mattered more.
They could blame 2016 on Hillary, not on the “I’m not him” strategy. Go figure that a 20+ year campaign to paint a woman as the literal devil would in fact cause problems for her at the ballot box, right? Who would have guessed except for anyone with a functional frontal cortex?
Tbf, you would have to hate yourself a lot to look at trump and say “eh… i dont agree with him and he’s likely to completely fuck the country and endanger millions of innocent lives… but look! The democrats are only saying that they arent trump. I better not do a damn thing and hope for the best!”
I guess democrats are just are idiotic and short visioned as republicans. Perhaps they are in fact the same.
The Harris campaign put out an 80 page policy guidebook explaining what they were offering. Stop denying responsibility from the voters. A bunch of people wanted this and a bunch of others figured this was better than rallying around the one viable alternative, be it a form a protest or laziness. Voters are ultimately responsible for who we collectively elect.
Vanishingly few voters read white papers. If that stuff isn’t messaged then it doesn’t matter. And a convention of “joy” wasn’t it.
The average US citizen is not going to sit down and parse through 80 pages of policy. Why the fuck didn’t she promote it in interviews? Every speech and interview I have seen she just skirts around questions and gives vague answers, very frequently repeating herself almost verbatim. It really didn’t inspire confidence. And I say this as someone who voted for her.
If she had a playbook, she ignored it and didn’t talk about it. Despite people begging for policies.
Trump has one, played dumb and wants to do it. Despite it being evil.
I wonder who won?
votes for Biden were “anything oh god anything but this.”
Yeah but it didn’t carry. Guess everyone forgot Trump.
So I guess we do this again in four years? Assuming elections are still a thing.
I think I’m just done. as many Democrats as Ive voted for and the best they can do is “Not as actively evil?” tired of it. Starting to think if we’re going to hell on a bucket maybe I should be the one holding the handle.
The dems are not our party. I don’t they ever will be in the foreseeable future. The issue is not making the dems win but stopping the GOP.
If elections still exist, and the Democratic Party still hasn’t been deposed, yes. We’ll likely have a mass of people voting to get rid of Trump’s chaos for anyone else, and the Dems will receive a boost. Then, when they run the same milquetoast candidate 4 years later with nothing to offer but “better than the alternative,” they’ll fail again.
It’s basically the same back and forth pendulum as before, but accelerated. Now incumbents can’t even expect to receive all 8 years before the pendulum shifts.
Democrats just aren’t going to be the progressive party. How many times are you going to fail to learn this lesson?
Yup. Democratic leadership would rather trump win than run a left-facing campaign and candidate. What’s the definition of insanity?
Democratic Party : Republican Party :: Washington Generals : Harlem Globetrotters
Democratic leadership is those of us who do the thankless work of playing politics to help others.
Find something different. You won’t. Sure Progressive Party Whatever - they’ll run into the exact same thing. You’re re-inventing the wheel because you don’t know that.
That’s…
I’m not sure we’re all talking about the same thing. The Democratic Party has been playing to the “center” longer than any of us have been alive, while shunning, excommunicating, and often literally arresting anyone to the left. And all that accomplishes and has ever accomplished is the Overton window shifting further and further right. Kamala was running on bragging about hiring “the good” republicans while sidestepping the massive issues anyone even slightly progressive wanted to talk about (and what almost surely turned off a huge portion of voters), which is the ongoing genocide in Gaza. She finally said the day before the election that she would do “everything in her power to end the war,” which is still not nearly enough when discussing a fuckin genocide.
So many of the people I know are leftists. None of them voted for her because of it. Sure, the democrats and liberals I know did—my parents, for example. But they have voted democrat the entire time I’ve been alive. They are solid, reliable Dem voters. They’re not the people she needed to appeal to either—but keeping them was certainly more important than any mythical “centrist/swing” voter.
Everyone that was arrested for sitting in school buildings protesting the genocide, everyone who is sickened by what we’re seeing. Who couldn’t stomach voting for someone who didn’t feel the need to say it was a genocide that sickens them. THOSE are the people the dems gain when, like in 2020, things are so bad they hold their noses and increase turnout, and they’re the votes they lose when they hold office and maintain the genocidal status quo.
100%
Here in deep-red Missouri the $15 minimum wage passed in a landslide, but for some reason, all Democrats wanted to talk about was tax cuts that no one thinks they’ll actually pass anyway.
Democratic consultants. The problem.
Democratic leadership has to call corporate donors before they can make any decisions
The Democratic Party is basically dead now. Time to sit back and watch the MAGAs eat themselves. Clock ticking.
Well that’s one way to look at this positively.
How do you see this going down? Internal power struggles and tantrum hissy fits?
Yeah no. I hate the democrats, I’m a registered libertarian. The popular vote said they’re fine with project 2025.
I don’t really care what issues anyone had. It was exesetential. We failed. That’s not a party issue, it’s an American issue. I don’t care about turnout, if you didn’t turn out you don’t care. Thats not on the party that’s on you. I don’t care about policy, it’s all about to get worse, we’ve seen it. Parties cease to matter when there’s dead bodies in the halls of government. We all saw the worst fucking coup attempt in history… And it worked. There is no party to blame for that. 2016 came down to poor leadership, this is just… deserved.
We’ll see what’s left to re-build with.
If the Republicans are going to call the Democrats communists and socialist regardless of how moderate a campaign Democrats run, Democrats might as well lean further left on economic policy. Appealing to the right does nothing because the right can appeal to the right better than the center-left can
This assumes the dems have any interest in actually improving the lives of Americans.
Jangling keys of “maybe if I get the senate I’ll raise minimum wage? Do you want… Legal weed sometime?” sure works well. Just look at that electoral map!
None of that will work anymore. The far right owns the house, the senate, the government enforcement agencies, and the Supreme Court. We’re nearing the end of the monopoly game and you don’t get anything extra for landing on free parking. The restraints for any of the rich and powerful just got taken off.
Pretty much this. The Business Plot succeeded, it just took another 100 years. Now they have their Mussolini-like strongman, and a fully captured legislative and judicial system, all without a March on Rome.
What do you think January 6th was?
They didn’t even have to show up to the party or draw a direct line to the cannon fodder
Treason?
Well yeah, but it was also a literal march on our Capital.
Which is precisely why they don’t. They don’t exist to threaten the establishment, they are part of it, and are there to provide the illusion of choice so that the public feel like we’re helping while those in power do whatever they need to at our expense to keep that power. Playing by the rules and within the systems they have set out for us can and will only ever maintain the status quo.
This makes sense if one has never been in any sort of leadership role or public-facing organization before.
It’s true in very narrow senses which are stretched to breaking because really it isn’t true.
Joe Biden suddenly turns into Joe Stalin…
