The last great presidential candidate. The only once I’ve ever actually liked.
Hopefully more senators like AOC will come around that were motivated by Bernie and can take the party over.
I hope liberals learn from this and start organizing. The billionaire-funded Democrat party will never pin blame on the capitalists that fund them to get working class votes.
Bernie’s coalition was filled with the exact type of voters who are now flocking to Donald Trump: Working class voters of all races, young people, and, critically, the much-derided bros. The top contributors to Bernie’s campaign often held jobs at places like Amazon and Walmart. The unions loved him. And— never forget — he earned the coveted Joe Rogan endorsement that Trump also received the day before the election this year. It turns out, the Bernie-to-Trump pipeline is real! While that has always been used as an epithet to smear Bernie and his movement, with the implication that social democracy is just a cover for or gateway drug to right wing authoritarianism, the truth is that this pipeline speaks to the power and appeal of Bernie’s vision as an effective antidote to Trumpism. When these voters had a choice between Trump and Bernie, they chose Bernie. For many of them now that the choice is between Trump and the dried out husk of neoliberalism, they’re going Trump.
Read Blackshirts and Reds
We need at least one new party in this country, and one that runs for local elections first to build a bench of people who can run for higher office.
Even if I didn’t believe the national Green Party was just a spoiler (regardless of how they started out,) they spend all their time and energy pushing a presidential candidate every four years rather than working on ground game.
I think states like Texas are actually fertile ground if you focus on what people are dealing with in their day to day life and start small-county commissions, town council positions, even sheriff if you have a county where the local sheriff is unpopular and your party platform is looking at criminal justice reform.
I also think pushing for changes to use ranked choice voting with proportional representation would generate long-term change. Single Tranferable Vote has worked well in Ireland, and historically it worked well in multiple American cities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote?wprov=sfti1
I think the problem isn’t the cities, it is the rural bits in between that won’t want to give up their excess power per vote in the current system.
Those are also places where a lot of regressive candidates run unopposed and hold office for decades because they’re the only ones who have an interest in the position. Prime spots for someone with different ideas to throw their hat in the ring.
I was specifically talking about changing the election system, not just getting elected.
Liberals and neoliberals are the problem. The only solution is for progressives to start a new party. The DNC just showed that it is incapable of learning, constantly courting the right that will never actually vote for them, or telling billionaire donors to fuck off.
Liberals are just conservatives that refuse to take their masks off. Neoliberals even more so. These are the “white moderates,” and the “supporters of the MIC,” that Martin Luther King Jr., and Eisenhower warned us about.
Bernie showed us the way forward. Billionaires are merely dragons to be slain and ignored.
I’ve been seeing suggestions for that book a lot. I was even going to see if I can grab it from my local library, but it’s just an e-book for some reason. I guess I can read it on my tablet but i prefer physical books. I do want to support my library though by using them, so it’s a tough choice lol.
You can always check out the e-book version even if you go find a physical copy to read instead. I saw a librarian asking people to do stuff like that since the active use of library services let’s them argue for better funding and services.
Also, see if they have a physical copy at another branch. My local library is part of a network that spans across multiple towns, and they can often get books sent to them from other branches if they don’t have a copy themswlves.
Good idea. I haven’t used my local library in awhile, but I’m worried about library funding with Trump. It’s why this is the first time in a long time I looked into a book from the library. I’m using any excuse to like you said, argue their services are being actively used. It’s good to hear it confirmed that it does actually help librarians and that they’re encouraging that.
Please note that the “Bernie bros” that became right wing could have been psyops. I’ve seen a few ones stupidly admitting it, because Trump would have struggled against Bernie, maybe even have lost in a landslide.
The right are perpetually angry. They are angry when they win and angry when they lose. It’s a hallmark of their cult. There’s no pleasing these people because they don’t know what they’re angry about, they just prefer to be angry.
Every fascist needs an enemy. The threat is required to rally around their flag and blame someone else for their failures. When there’s no obvious threat in sight, it has to be produced - else there’s no other way to maintain popularity among subordinates while also sanctioning them.
The enemy in fascism is always all powerful and inferior at the same time.
Seeing Bernie speak truth to power is incredibly refreshing, especially since he points the finger not at the voting public, but at his own team mates, who absolutely did drop the ball multiple times.
I hope people actually take his words on board.
A lot of my in-laws are Trump supporters, but do you know who they support more than Trump? Bernie. They want a lot of the same things that progressives do. Obviously there are Trump supporters that are racists and fascists, but I’d bet the majority just want a better deal for the working class, and they fell for Trump’s promise that he’s the one to do it.
That’s quite interesting that there is a lot of cross over between Trump and Bernie, but Trump does at least pretend to care about the working class.
The average voter is living paycheck to paycheck, just trying to make ends meet. They see executives making billions while the US government is spending trillions on military equipment, and meanwhile, they’re seeing the prices of basic necessities skyrocket and they’re just trying to figure out how to live.
This person may vote for Trump, or just sit out the election because they don’t think either candidate cares about them. It’s not about whether you’re progressive enough or centrist enough, it’s about speaking to the biggest problem: wealth inequality.
Will the Democrats figure this out? I guess we’ll see in 3 years.
Given that the only person I’ve seen blaming anyone but the voters has been Bernie, I doubt it.
Blaming the voting public does nothing other than to help us feel better about ourselves. “It’s not our fault, the people are just stupid and naive. They were always going to vote for Trump, there’s nothing else we could have done”. It’s what we’ve been doing the past three election cycles and it isn’t working.
We can’t make them change. Change only comes from within. We can’t keep telling them they’re better off with us. We need to pass legislation so that the average, uniformed voter can see it for themselves.
That’s one thing that I like about grandpa style lefties and don’t like about Lemmy: blaming trumpists for wanting a change in the political system. Lemmy and MAGA crowd share common fears about the future and have absolutely different solutions.
Why the fuck one wants to highlight the difference and not the thing that’s in common. People achieve unimaginable results when working together.
I want Bernie for president and I’m not even American.
We tried. And almost got him. But then the DNC Services Corp rigged the game against us to stop him.
I’ve said this before but the DNC is actually just another wing of the Oligarchy. They exist to provide a fabricated conflict so that people think it’s a divide based on ideals, not on class divide it truly is. Look at the wealth of all of the leaders in the DNC. It’s pretty much the same circles and wealth as the RNC.
I don’t think it is quite that simple. It is more like part of each party is controlled by that interest but there are also people who genuinely try to achieve something matching their own world view, some of those good, some bad.
People keep saying they list due to reaching out to moderate republicans. No, they ARE the moderate republicans. They won’t do anything that will upset their wealthy donors.
I think the term you’re looking for is “controlled opposition.”
Is there a chance for him to win vs Trump if he was chosen as the primary?
…something, something, Bernie warned us about this in a video 20 years ago, something, something, status quo…
I think the Democrats are too far right, but that’s not what lost them the election. What lost them the election is that voters think the President controls the price of groceries, and if cheaper groceries means killing a lot of brown people, that’s a small price to pay.
Trump is going to prove that the President controls the price of groceries by enacting tariffs on imported food and getting rid of all the people who catch, raise, and harvest our food. He’s going to make grocery prices go through the roof.
I’m sure that will be blamed on someone else. Probably trans people.
It’s a toss up between them or the “illegals.” While they do hate trans people, it’s a more convincing argument for people who aren’t complete idiots to say it’s because of an increased demand caused by non-citizens taking resources from patriotic American citizens™
More like Democrats lol.
And the same immigrants they deported which keep help keep grocery prices down without all the subsidies so the people at the top can price gouge us during a pandemic only to line their pockets and have Republicans shoot down every chance Democrats try to legislate against it.
It is so incredibly refreshing to hear someone with (however limited) power say what I’ve been seeing with the naked eye.
A four-hour drive through rural America last week showed me this: trump signs in the very poorest and the very richest yards, for miles and miles. There was the occasional Harris sign for obviously middle-class dwellings but not all.
He describes the plight of these people correctly, and while they haven’t been offered enough by the dems, they aren’t choosing the republicans because they are offering them more. They’re choosing them because they fear change and the Republicans promise to protect them from change. The fear comes from ignorance / lack of a decent rural education system.
Not American, but I saw it as the opposite: that US voters are sick of the status quo. They want a radical change candidate who’ll shake things up. They want anything but business-as-usual.
Not to discount stupidity and racism. There’s that too, but I have to hope it’s mostly borne out of fear.
Yeah, that is a very weird position to hold, the status quo is shit for me but I don’t want change. Not disagreeing with you though that it is that way.
People are pretty good at adapting to even pretty lousy conditions if a steady-state can be maintained. We all have very strong loss aversion though. You can capitalize on the most extreme versions on this in populations that don’t have a loss buffer, lack diverse skillsets , and have had limited exposure to diversity of any sort. Tell them someone that looks different than them is going to change the food they eat, build a different place of worship next to their church, and take their jobs away from them by working for much less and you’ve got an effective boogeyman that you can promise to defend them from (while stealing from them even). Hell, it works so damn well you can tell them that these boogie men will eat their pets and they will take you seriously.
I’m tired of being told how awesome the economy is. It’s great for the rich, but the cost of necessities like housing, food, and healthcare has outpaced the CPI, so we all feel worse. A cheaper big screen tv doesn’t help much if you can’t afford the basics.
Aggregate economic data only says so much. Lots of INDIVIDUAL people are suffering. While the CPI is one basket of products, everyone has their own, and this everyone has their own rate of inflation. So saying wages have kept up with inflation is a fallacy on 2 fronts. Some saw income outpace the CPI, others it did not and they’ve lost income. But even among the former group, everyone had a personal rate of inflation that may well be higher than the CPI.
Instead, the wealthy and politicians look at averages and medians and assume it’s just negative feelings. But we were alive in the 90s. We were alive in the early 2000s. We know about the 50s and 60s. We know the economy used to be better for working people. We want better.
Trump, of course, will not deliver that. But Harris didn’t inspire confidence she would, either.
My wife is a teacher, so we use her healthcare, but I still peek in at the healthcare at my job when enrollment comes along, just to be diligent.
It went up 20% this year, from $600 to $720. If you make $30K a year and got a 3% cost of living adjustment, you make less this year than last year from healthcare alone.
Food, gas, rent, cars, childcare, utilities, everything is up. I guess it’s cool that US steel or something might be doing well, and the stock market is up, but that minimally affects the day to day of most people.
My raises, baring promotion, are 2% a year. I did the math. I’ve lost $10,000 a year to inflation at this point. In aggregate it’s around $22,000 at this point.
And yet every newscast has a stock ticker. Even NPR gives the stock index ratings several times a day.
Even Trump loved ranting about his stock market.
Stock markets are just one measure though. Just like you don’t know the weather by just looking at a thermometer, you don’t know the economy by just looking at the stock market.
We don’t really have to worry about what Trump offered, he got less votes than last time on the same tired platform. The problem was Democrats through and through not being left at all. Losing millions of votes that way. Some people can play the lesser of two evils game, but as we just saw there are not enough people who can vote while holding their noses.
I held my nose, but the numbers clearly show it was a Democrat failure to communicate, empathize, and/or initiate with voters.
I held my nose, but the numbers clearly show it was a Democrat failure to communicate, empathize, and/or initiate with voters.
But they got Dick Cheney on board!
America needs more people like Bernie, too bad Republicans and Democrats are hopeless and don’t get it
The Democratic party has failed us. We need an actual workers party and we have about 3 years to build it.
Join PSL if you have not already
I have my first PSL meeting on Sunday, I’m really anxious (hello social anxiety) but I’m bringing my husband. Organize or die is what I’m thinking! I’m sorry your post brought out miserable people
Capitalism does not need to go. Croneyism needs to go. Our government has for decades been catering to the corporations that run America, from Amazon to the Railroad. They helped these massive corporations consolidate their markets by regulating small and new players out of existence. They take their money and make sure they don’t lose their spots on top.
You guys don’t deserve it. This election proved to me that you’re leftists can be every bit as hateful as your right
Yeah the people advocating for the end of a genocide and social healthcare are the hateful ones 💀
They’re not hateful, just too stupid to face the reality that one of the two viable choices they had was clearly much better than the other.
When they want to end it with bloodshed, yes. Yes they are.
Welcome to reality
It’s easy to paint a huge group of people with a broad brush, but that’s exactly the mindset that got us here.
That’s rich from a group calling everyone a Nazi in the last few months unless they fully agree with you on Gaza, and I’m a leftist and one that’s been at this a while, and you Americans are toxic as fuck. You don’t perceive that we around the world who are actually leftists are aghast at the stupidity of your country.
The right was always toxic, but the left really went with it this election too. Nobody was good enough for anyone and nobody was leftist enough for everyone. And if you saw someone you thought was less left, you shouted “Nazi” at them. Not just at the right wingers, but your own allies on the left.
You have every right to be frustrated and angry, and if it helps you to direct that anger at me, then go for it. I want you to know that even though it feels like there are so many people against you, there are people around the world you’ve never met that are pulling for you. I sincerely wish you the best, and I hope that you’re able to find happiness.
Nobody was good enough for anyone and nobody was leftist enough for everyone
Very true. Everybody is concerned about how right they are through highlighting how wrong whoever else is. This era of profilicity will exterminate left thought
what’s a little genocide for a seasoned leftist? cultures come and go. it’s just genocide.
If you really actually cared about Palestine, you wouldn’t have stood off to the side and let the racist fascist through. Cause now Palestine is done.
You guys are mad cause neither candidate agreed with you on one issue? Are you new to politics and elections? Last two elections I’ve had to vote for shitty neo liberals, cause I knew the other option was much much worse. Sometimes you have to eat shit and like it
Nailed it. The Dems didn’t fail the voters, the voters failed themselves. Some fell in love with a con man and some sat on their purity pedestals and refused to help. America is full of all kinds of idiots.
oh so sanctimonious “purity pedestals” like, Stop abetting an exterminationist campaign
It was only broadly popular with most of the country and polled well in swing states; thank goodness party leadership had the stones to stick to their values and loose on this issue. Nobody to blame here but people who didn’t make campaign choices and do not have access to the levers of power!
Just recently Israel said they will not allow Palestinians to return to northern Gaza. That’s ethnic cleansing at best. Biden is still in charge.
Are we expecting perfect? Is stopping a genocide perfect? It’s the bare fucking minimum you clowns. Stop giving Netenyahu a blank cheque
The Dems definitely failed us friend. They ran a shit campaign and everyone knows it
Why do liberals have to get in the way and make enemies of us? We’ll have to go through you all then.
Leftism isn’t a stranger to being attacked on all sides and being pushed to the margins, but we’re still here generation after generation even as the most rich and powerful nations organize their militaries and media against us.
Because here the person talks about their frustration and you’re blaming them. Don’t be like that. Empathize!
I think you need to reread the thread, where did the blame begin? I’m getting tired of the high road.
Sure, kiddo
Keep chasing that center as your country descends into fascism. It’s easier than thinking for yourself
psst you don’t need to remind them they’re assholes that explicitly. they know. they’re happy to discuss the shades of supporting a genocide and why its okay to shove the few under the bus to save the many. Never mind that saving the few would have saved more of the many in the long run.
The DNC isn’t entitled to Americans votes. They lost us and lost folks to the Republicans because they promised to fix the economy and are actually talking to people directly. The DNC is fucking dead to me.
I voted Kamala but I knew she didn’t stand a chance. I knew we were cooked when it was Biden/Kamala
Thank you for choosing Kamala even though you didn’t want to. We’re in this mess because too many people were the cartoon character somebody posted above.
No, two people were cartoon characters. you failed to realize one of them was harris.
You’re from El Salvador. Should I suggest that El Salvadorians deserve MS-13 because you’re stupid brown people who can’t get away from drugs?
No, you bigoted piece of shit.
That suggestion would only be as bigoted as calling criticism from an El Salvadoran bigoted. I’m a white male American and I say America is full of idiots. That was how Trump got into the White House to begin with, and it’s why he’s going back. It’s not either party’s fault, it’s that the majority of Americans are just stupid.
Lets say you have a neighbor and every time you invite them over for tea they shit on your carpet.
Do you continue inviting them over? if your answer is no, well now you understand why a large portion of the american electorate didn’t show up to vote again. the democrats need to stop shitting on our carpet. for the record we don’t invite the republicans over either. they shit everywhere.
You havent sent signals strong enough to demonstrate you wouldn’t shit on the carpet again. Trump, well, when he gets close to burning the house down again we’ll probably show up with the firetrucks. probably. depends on how much hes threatening our local communities. if hes smart he wont
You are giving way too much of a pass to a lot of evil people and their propaganda by blaming it only on the voters.
I’m not completely disagreeing with you though. I’m a white dude in America too and the ignorance and gullibility of many of our citizens is astounding.
Am I saying that criticism from the outside world is a bad thing? No. What I’m saying is that I could very easily point at bad things about any country - it solves absolutely nothing.
Leftists can definitely be as stupid as rightists, and we’re seeing it in full technicolor in this thread. “Waaaahhh, there weren’t any good options. I should be able to click on something perfect!”
I think you’re confused. we said ‘not genocidal.’ if that makes a candidate perfect dear fucking god how low the bar has fallen.
And if they really cared about what Bernie has to say they would have listened to him and voted Harris
news flash: he, like many other leftists are welcome to say whatever they want. doesnt mean we give a shit what he says. we often agree with him on things and support them. but ‘bernie says blah’ only gets your foot in the door for about 3 seconds until we look into what he said. if the reasoning behind it is wanting we reject it.
If you think bernie represents the left, hell if you think anyone represents the left you’re sorely mistaken.
that being said: many leftists told you exactly what you needed to hear the entire year you needed to hear it.
- the genocide is not okay.
- it will impact our votes.
- a few of us have literally been screaming it for the last 2 months in the public sphere as you’re all aware.
if you think we needed to shift our position. you were very sadly mistaken. both morally and strategically. as you’re now witnessing. We didn’t go out and pressure our friends for harris, why? because harris didn’t budge and you spent more time telling us how your grand ‘lesser evil’ strategy was the optimal behavior, even more than tell harris to fuck off on genocide!
guess it wasnt so optimal since you know, people tuned you out and you lost. oops. You see the thing is a lot of leftists are actually very quiet. they spend their time with their friends enjoying life and as a network we signal to each other when its important to vote. we did that in 2020 for biden and we conditioned it on him having a single term.
Biden, as we expected, went counter to his promises on a number of factors. so we didn’t quietly send our signals to our group. My roommate and I for example were talking last week about the election and they were like ‘looks like another 4 years of trump, and I was like ‘yup, gonna suck’’. we both still voted. but we didn’t do what we often would do and be like ‘yeah harris is worth getting the gang together and disrupting our shit to get our networks of apathetic voting friend out’
why? hand waves the last 4 years and the last 6 months in particular. genocide is not a stance you shift on.
News flash, no candidate will ever court your vote since you are a fringe lunatic who doesn’t understand how anything works. Congrats, you and your fellow “leftists” enabled Trump. Spin it however you want, but the bullshit caring about Palestine is just that… bullshit. By pushing 3rd party votes, or not voting at all, you directly helped the Trump campaign.
Congrats comrade, you got what you wanted.
Congrats your candidate lost shrug. Whats the definition of insanity again?
Bernie is not a leftist
Oh so he’s a right winger?
Yes, all capitalists are
You realize all of you are capitalists right? Unless you live in the woods without a job or SIN and away from money, you’re part of the capitalist system. You may wish to be a green army jacket wearing commies but you’re not. Americans no longer have a sense of reality.
“All capitalists are right wingers!” You guys became what you criticized, every bit as reactionary, hateful and living in a black and white world as the trumpers. I personally have never experienced the level of racism and intolerance from the left that I saw this election. I’m native who has always been anti fascist, I never hung out with or been friends with right wing weirdos, yet I’ve been called a Nazi cause I don’t agree with everything you guys say. White kids calling people of color Nazis, that’s where the American left is at.
That’s a solid take.
Far left and far right are just “far”.
Far from truth, reality or the burden of existing in a social system with people they don’t agree with.
This makes them mad and they traded their honor and honesty to pwn the libs.
The only difference between tankies and the magats is a red hat made in a Chinese sweatshop.
Running to the mythical center-right just failed spectacularly.
Democrats’ only tactic failed.
What failed was millions of people deciding that walking across broken glass barefoot was better than wearing shoes they didn’t like.
This country is full of fucking idiots.
He’s spot-on. I’m pissed and do want change.
I think Bernie is giving too much credit to Americans. IMO the election doesn’t show that the Dems abandoned anybody, it shows that half the voters in the country are fucking idiots. To help them you would have to trick them into letting you. Unfortunately most people with that ability are assholes who are only going to use the amorphous mass of stupidity for their own benefit.
The election Margin was under 200k people in 3 states. Correctly people in safe states voted for what they wanted not what they had to do.
this is the real based take. may the salt of your enemies enhance the flavor of your meals.
How can this man be so based. The world simply didn’t deserve him.
i hope Bernie discovers Fediverse and stop using the broken bird site
…i get his correspondence via email…
