Democratic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib defeated her Republican opponent in Michigan’s 12th congressional district election on Tuesday, securing a fourth term as the only Palestinian-American woman in the US Congress.
The Associated Press called the race with just 18 percent of the votes counted.
Tlaib secured 77 percent of the vote, defeating the Republican Party’s James Hooper who received just 19 percent of the vote.
Her victory comes amid the backdrop of Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians so far and has been diplomatically and militarily supported by the Biden-Harris administration for more than a year.
Tlaib has been a vocal critic of the war, calling for the US to withhold weapons from Israel. Her opposition to the war on Gaza and support for pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses have drawn harsh criticism from both Republicans and Democrats.
Who could’ve guessed that appealing to far-right republicans — who are going to vote republican anyway — wouldn’t be a winning strategy?
Fucking learn from this, DNC.
They will not. They will do what they always do:
- rely on people being pissed off enough after four years of Rep rule to vote for the Dems no matter what
- rely on a few select ‘free’ topics (abortion, LGBTQIA+ rights etc) to show how different they are, when they are mostly exactly the same when it comes to topics that matter to most voters daily (ie topics that affect them personally, like their own economic situation)
I recon the only thing that could actually make them shift to the left is strong opposition from the left, basically a left Ross Perot, if you want. One that collects all the votes of the people who were too disillusioned this time around to actually vote, and then basically says “Shift to the left enough, be a real alternative, and you can have these”. Without someone or a party like that, no, they will not change. They will continue to further the interests of billionaires, just like the Reps.
Tbh I’m not convinced there’s going to be an election 4 years from now
Then you don’t appreciate how effective a release valve from public frustration elections are
The ruling class will never give them up. They own both parties, why would they?
Don’t worry. You’ll get your patronizing pretend democracy again in two years.
To be perfectly clear, I’m not convinced we’re going to have free and fair elections anymore after this
you did not have them to begin with
Why would we start?
There will be, whether the US stays a single union and its a single vote is a different discussion.
So, I’m just pondering here, but it seems to me that it’s a bad Idea to run an unpopular presidential candidate because when voters choose to stay home, they also take their down-ballot votes with them.
Very true. I was wondering why the GOP won the Senate but that makes perfect sense.
Dont expect the Democrats to learn anything from this because their Billionaire donors would rather they lose by promoting policies that don’t threaten profits than win and cost the donors money.
Their billionaire donors don’t lose, that’s the point. Reps are following the same main purpose of allowing barely restricted capital accumulation.
To know what happens in US politics when the donors are seeing even the distant possiblity of losing one day, ask Black Panthers for example.
Im very familiar with the BPP and model my contributions to direcr action orgs around their principles as well as the desire to set up parallel power structure. Without the rank and file or our own power structures, there is no foundation or material support for revolution. We’re not even in a position where violence could help us yet. In short, unfortunatly, at this point it seems things need to get worse before they can get better, if they can get better.
Do not support genocide. It is that easy!
It’s not that easy. Democrats have to go a lot more left than just “not genocide.” They have to actually give a shit about the conditions of the working class if they want the working class to support them.
That is true but Tlaib won by an overwhelming majority of 77% against 19%. Indicating most voters did not blindly pick D or R.
I need you to understand something: Gaza is not the only reason somebody might have voted for Tlaib.
That is undeniable. Her other progressive policies also appear to be very popular. 77%!
This means not endorsing Harris was the correct political move for Tlaib.
Tlaib correctly understood that she needed to appeal to her voters to win. Donors have a lot of money but it turns out they do not get you elected. Getting votes does.
Democratic party is not a left leaning or even a centrist party. Most of right wing policy of Republican presidency is continued by the Democratic presidency.
We have a conservative party and a very conservative party.
We have two very conservative parties with one trying to shake their branding of being otherwise.
This makes me glad. I obviously wasn’t hoping for much from this election to begin with, but I’ve been finding a lot of silver-linings since the news started coming in. Shout out to Nebraska
and Floridafor their cannabis legalization ballot measures.Florida’s cannabis legalization ballot measure failed…
And thanks in part to Michigan voters, we have a president who will fuck over Gaza even more. Great success.
And so the voter blaming begins.
The voters are absolutely responsible for putting Trump into power. Anyone who facilitated that is fully responsible for whatever happens over the next four years.
Democrats are responsible for winning over voters.
The voters they kicked out at the DNC to make room in their big tent for the Bush administration, AIPAC all their corporate donors.
Ask those donors why they did not vote for Harris hard enough. Or the Republicans she was wooing over with Liz Cheney.
Doesn’t change what I said, though. Trump won because the average voter wants fascism.
Unless you are willing to criticize the Democrats they will not change this losing strategy. Admit they ran an awful campaign and push them to run on good policies next time.
I am willing to criticize the Democrats. There’s a lot I would have done differently.
But Jesus himself could descend from heaven preaching love for mankind and the American people would still vote for Trump instead.
The average American voter wants fascism, it’s as simple as that.
motherfucker you voted for fascism as well
One Cheney convert in a swing state is worth a dozen liberals like me in California lol. Swinging right is the rational political move for the leftmost candidate. Swinging left is the rational political move for the rightmost candidate, which is why we saw Trump clumsily try to soften his stance on abortion.
Which is why the Democrats massively won every swing state.
A few people in Michigan were not swayed by Liz Cheney. And the Democrats did not want them on stage at the DNC. Alas. Democrats clearly did not need those votes to achieve victory.
Look, it’s such an exhausting night, and I really do believe that you want to see a better world. I do too.
I’m just so shattered that we’re looking at four years of chipping away at the rights of women, LGBT, and transgender people. Four years of degrading all the checks and balances against the president. Four years of political retaliations going unchecked. Four years of aggressive anti-climate policy, inhumane border policy, and pandering to a Russia (and now North Korea!) that is also slaughtering innocents in Ukraine. Four years of middle east policy that is at least as bad as Biden/Harris’s, but likely far worse. And four years of slamming our economy with tariffs to “own the Chinese” I guess.
A vote for Harris was a vote to make things better. Not everything. Good lord she wasn’t the answer to so many major issues facing the US and the world. But it was an objectively better vote, by every metric, than a vote for Trump, or a no-vote. I just can’t argue any more on that.
How many times do you have to be confronted with the absolute, abject failure of that strategy before you start to question it?
Anybody who failed to vote Harris shares the blame, it’s fairly obvious lol
Change your nick to WeyounWatch an episode of DS9 maybe? Sisko is the literal embodiment of a person who is willing to make the tough choice that he personally finds unethical, but knows will be better for the world as a whole.
Like supporting genocide for a hegemonic empire? Again, that’s Weyoun, even his rhetorics about “tough choice for greater good” is neraly the same as yours, Weyoun.
Enjoy your fascist dictator then
For them to accept this they would have to value their principled fantasies less than the fascist reality they have enabled.
Short of putting boots on the ground or dropping a nuke there is no way to “fuck over Gaza even more.”
The one thing I’ve learned from experience w/ Donald Trump is that he finds a way to make things worse.
That’s a very broad statement that I can’t argue with because I have no intention to defend Donald Trump. Wiith that in mind I imagine anything he does to Gaza is just in line with what Biden or Harris would have also done but probably dumber. They had over a year to make us believe otherwise.
So then the logic here is “vote for a candidate who is at least as bad for Gaza, but will also fuck up the rest of the world”. Or “don’t vote for the candidate who will be obviously less damaging for the rest of the world, even though my action won’t help Gaza at all”.
Even if you assume Harris would have been just as bad for Gaza… I mean it’s patently clear that the only choice is to vote for the lesser of two evils and then raise hell that you need better policies from them.
The collapse of America would be less damaging for the rest of the world than its continued existence.
Voting for a lesser evil is still being complicit in some degree of evil.
Maybe the ossue was Democrats trying to appeal to Republican voters, who would rather vote for Republicans and get everything they want instead of only some of what they want.
In many elections, that would make sense. But in this election, there was a sizeable group of Nikki Haley Republicans up for grabs, who clearly didn’t want to vote Trump if they could get an alternative. Is there a group of leftists who may have turned out in larger numbers if Harris had swung left? Yeah, maybe. But is that group anywhere near as large as the Haley Republicans, and are they present in swing states? No and no.
Clearly that failed, and will continue to fail. There is no sich thing as a never Trump Republican because he gives conservatives everything they want. Democrats will continue to lose until they vreak away from Regan style neoliberalism. They need to start offering actual solutions that benefit workers like universal healthcare, returns to pension plans, and housing reforms.
But how will they get that superPAC money then?
The only hope Gaza ever had was the Axis of Resistance, no matter who won they were facing annihilation and forced displacement. North Gaza is the blueprint for the rest of the Strip. Only if Israel is defeated can Palestine be free.
Trump was declared a winner before Michigan had a called winner for president.
Yes? I’m not saying Michigan handed him the election, I’m saying protest votes and no-votes played a big role. We’re fucked due in part to people who say “ooh that will show the DNC”
She knew how to keep her job.
I hope she’s happy with the outcome.
I don’t think she’s happy that her own party’s presidential candidate failed to capture their own constituents by using trump as a scapegoat
Gaza gets wiped out even faster now on top of all the other bad things the GOP want.
Not that I believe that Gaza dissenters mattered at all in this election. I’d be amazed if even 1% of voters considered it a factor for their vote.
I think what you’re supposed to take away from this is actual left wing candidates who are against genocide did well this election. A big part of why Kamala lost is because she did not have high voter turnout from the left. She spent most of her campaign trying to appeal to moderate right-wing voters who did not vote for her. And she also did not get the turn out of the left because of it. She should have been trying to appeal to farther left voters by promoting actual left Wing ideas and not sicking the police on anti genocide protesters.
But hey it don’t matter, not like we’re ever going to get to vote again anyway
Wiped out faster? Based on the stern red lines that cannot be crossed put down by Biden?
Locked in the basement of your mind palace.
Blue MAGA cannot fathom a universe where one of the two candidates isn’t a literal Nazi.
You could just have typed out “I have no brain” and saved the spare processing power you’ve got left. I thought this would end after the election, but I guess it goes on. You people all say the same long debunked drivel, so I will not waste time writing new text, when the old is still uncontested
edit: and the addendum about scolding leftists when 50% don’t vote
I think it gets wiped out at exactly the same pace
What is trump gonna do that Biden didn’t? He was giving the maximum money and weapons allowed every single week.
Let’s not pretend it wasn’t Biden who vetoed every single ceasefire resolution in the UN
I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see American troops helping in the genocide come next year.
Pyrrhic victory. She has her seat, but will likely have no ability to influence any positive change. A unified front was needed, a unified front did not emerge.
There was no “winning” divided. Now we all lose together.
Let the centre unify with the left for once. It seems to be the one winning.
Moot point. The opportunity has passed.
Real convenient how it’s always time to defeat fascism, no time to go left and once it’s a fascist in office it’s too late to go left, y’all ruined it.
Not a Democrat, just someone who understands that without unity during this election, we were always going to get this result.
Because a Tlaib endorsement would have made up for the millions of missing votes for Kamala?
And now blame Tlaib for all the Demopublicans losing.
Road map for me how she will be of any positive effect once the new administration takes power.
She’ll be in power, unlike Kamala
You forgot the quotes. “Power.” She’ll be a progressive member of the minority party under a fascist regime who has already signaled a complete lack of care for its political adversaries.
I’d argue that the two women are not far removed from one enother in the amount of power they will wield.
Then you’re an idiot and there’s no helping you
The feeling is mutual.
why should the left unify with a canidate who was at every option deciding to run farther to the right, a canidate who dicided a genocide was moraly ok? why is that something we should just accept
What we get to accept now is GOP control of the executive, judicial, and both chambers of the legislative.
Then it sounds like the center really fucked up, doesn’t it?
Sounds like anyone and everyone who couldn’t figure out that we weren’t beating fascism unless we stuck together really fucked up. Now we get to live with it.
The center/center-right was in charge and calling the shots. They were driving the ship and demanding conformance from the left. The left largely did conform. The strategic choices however were not made by them, they were made by the center/center-right. They should own their mistakes.
Which is it? There are so, so many progressives who can effect change out there, or most everyone to the left of the Dems conformed but it wasn’t enough?
You say as harris literaly said that she wanted class colaberation … a charicteristic that has been seen in every type of facism.
also if everyone was trying to beat facism why did Haris make no attempt to bring in the left she was hostile to it at every turn, even at the easiest part of saying “genocide bad”
There were two candidates who could win. I didn’t like either of them. That doesn’t mean one wasn’t closer to what I’d like to see for this country.
Now we have what we have.
What was the breakdown of the district’s vote in the presidential election? I’m surprised that wasn’t included in the article. It seems extremely pertinent.
Another reason to love her.
