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’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.
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™
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.
Don’t call Bernie a king…
I think it’s more of a synonym for “the GOAT” or any other superlative rather implying he has a divine right to rule. E.g. “if you come at the king, you best not miss”
I am, in fact, aware of the sociopolitical aspects of the phrase, thanks a bunch, lib.
woof ok sorry
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.
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.
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.
…something, something, Bernie warned us about this in a video 20 years ago, something, something, status quo…
So why did you endorse it all Bernie? Washing your hands clean now as if nothing happened? We were all saying this months ago. But you said it was Kamala’s turn.
Because Kamala was better than Trump and months out from the election is too late to challenge the fundamentals of a political party
No it was never too late. There should have been an open primary With three months left there was plenty of time.
Kamala was massively ahead of Trump within 2 weeks of her swap in. Then she started losing in the polls when she opened her mouth and stated her name was Joseph Robinette Biden.
He would have won music video https://youtu.be/moNHfeBJ81I
Feel the Bern music video https://youtu.be/dzgBkpY-6mE
Alright this is gettin a bit much, Bernie endorsed all of this shit. The change he’s talking about was on the ballot and he was pushing the conservative coddling moderate.
He was trying to do everything he could to prevent Trump. That meant holding his tongue so as not to encourage people against strategic voting. It’s a very dumb system we have, but it’s not Bernie’s fault we’re in it.
Now that the general is over, he can speak his mind again. And probably a hint of getting ahead of the Democratic Party’s inevitable blaming of the left for this loss rather than an ounce of introspection.
Not everything, one thing, the same thing everyone here was trying to do, the same thing the DNC was doing, trying to appeal to conservatives. This is the result, no one wanted conservative democrats, but everyone was holding their nose and pushing for it.
Now after the fact people are trying to act like they support progressives.
For once I disagree with Bernie.
You can blame the DNC for being useless and out of touch but they always have been, nothing changed there. You can blame them for their shitty messaging and not listening to the concerns of working people … ditto.
What changed in this election is that millions of people, who know Trump is a a liar, a criminal, a rapist, a narcissist … I could go on and on. Well, they decided to vote for him because none of those negative traits were sufficiently off-putting.
This was a test of the collective character and morality of the nation and the United States failed that test miserably. Put it down to a poor standard of public education, Russian/Iranian/Chinese propaganda, accelerationism, racism, misogyny, whatever mix of reasons you’re comfortable with. Could the DNC have done better? Absolutely. Would the DNC doing better have won the election for Harris? Probably not, given the margin of victory.
Trump’s vote was largely static. He didn’t add significant support in any way. We already knew a third of the country was filled with regressive assholes. The reason he won was that over 15 million people who voted for Biden in 2020 sat this one out. This was 100% a messaging failure and the DNC deserves all the blame. Sanders is absolutely right here. We wanted to hear about unions and job protection and taxing billionaires, not see Harris try to court right wingers while paling around with that fucking ghoul Liz Cheney and her war criminal father. They fucked up, they lost.
Trump’s vote was largely static. He didn’t add significant support in any way.
That’s my point. Trump is a known quantity now and he didn’t lose support. That’s a failure of the US electorate.
Ask yourself why Harris had to run a near perfect campaign to even stand a chance of winning while Trump ran a campaign that should’ve seen him lose badly, in a more informed and moral country, and still won.
Because she’s party of the administration in power and people aren’t happy right now, so they blame whoever is in power even if it’s not quite their fault. They don’t care that the rate of inflation slowed to basically normal, they care that things are still expensive because their wages haven’t risen to match the raised inflation and their savings are lower. It used to be easier for incumbents, but as the conditions in the US continue to degrade from late stage capitalism and 60 years of neoliberal policies, I have a feeling it will continue to be the opposite.
Holding the line won’t work with people getting poorer every year (and if your wage doesn’t match inflation or the rising costs of housing or transportation, that’s what happening, you’re getting poorer).
Bro if you call that campaign “near perfect,” have I got a bridge to sell you.
That’s not what I said, not even close.
She wasn’t even the candidate for most of it… she was only the candidate because the other guy had to be replaced for having egg salad for brains
I’ve been wondering about exactly this, do you have any statistics you can point me to? No hard feelings if it was a thing you saw but didn’t save.
Nah, you’re wrong to blame the voters.
It’s time to take an honest look at DNC leadership and ask some difficult questions - why aren’t they interested in doing more to actually win votes? Will they ever learn that pandering to corporations for bribe money is a losing strategy?
Besides, Trump actually got fewer votes this time around than 2020. So your premise is flawed there too. It’s just that Harris and the DNC got way less. Dems lost this one and if you ask me it’s because of their Israel First policy and fierce commitment to ongoing genocide and denial of reality. Couple that with insane inflation directly and negatively impacting people’s material conditions, and somehow Trump was able to pose as the change candidate. Politically, that’s all that matters when the people are miserable.
Removed by mod
buried deep in your comment is a reasonable criticism of his actions, but it’s difficult to want to engage with that because of how smug and condescending your comment is.
What way have you found in the last 4 years to stop trump and what sucess did you have?
Stop giving bombs for genocide and stop telling people that the economy is already great so they should not ask for more and instead give popular policy positions that help people more than a week before the election/after early voting.
How sucessfull have you been with that?
