• 4grams
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      318 days ago

      No shit I’m tired of the post-mortem quarterbacking. There’s always one weird trick that you can point to, everyone wants an easy reason why this happened.

      Well, I have one. america is a fascist country. Apparently we just decided to forgo the plausible deniability.

  • @bouh@lemmy.world
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    717 days ago

    The problem with Harris is the problem of all liberals: they don’t understand the problems liberalism is causing. Fascism offers terrible solutions to those problems, and thus it wins.

  • @FrowingFostek@lemmy.world
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    4519 days ago

    I understand the poster may be very emotional because of the election. Yet, This strikes me as incredibly reductive.

    I think she lost because, she represents the continuation of the current administration. People want to break from the status quo, even if that means harming society to do it.

    The dems need a left wing populist, asap.

      • @Maggoty@lemmy.world
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        17 days ago

        Uh no. You don’t just give up and blow up the country. Even if he gets to full authoritarian you’d need the peaceful structures of organization to have any chance at doing more than dying at 3 in the morning. It’s not sexy to Americans but the answer is the same as always, organize, protest, slow stuff down in critical work areas, and go further only if it’s absolutely required. Until he actually does anything you don’t even have a moral high ground, you’re just going to get called a terrorist, and rightly so.

      • @Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        918 days ago

        Literally all you post is political rage-bait. How is the weather in Russia these days comrade?

        This kind of shit is exactly what Russia wants. Divide the US, push violence, destabilize the country. We have paths forward that do not involve violence. Now is the time to push for ranked choice voting to allow 3rd party candidates a real chance. The DNC has been out of touch for years, and ranked choice voting will allow us to side step them and choose a candidate with a real chance.

        Start small and local. Connect with your local representatives. Have a conversation about ranked choice voting. Come up with a plan that we can achieve together to make this a reality.

          • It’s a good idea but it’s so frought with controversy. I’ve yet to see the momentum needed to force it through. Like, show me you can orginiaze a national, or even just statewide, strike and I’ll start believing.

            The fact that we have this tool that no one will even look at is so discouraging. Show these Trumpers what a failed economy looks like when the people on rhe raw side of the deal throw their hands up.

        • You don’t get it. The Russians are getting what they want because the DNC has done nothing to stop it. You can keep fighting uphill and I’ll continue to lend my vote but you get nothing else. Sorry.

          If you want my suggestion don’t put your political capital into the DNC. They dont know how to spend it. Form a new party and make them suffer. Tea partiers did it and reshaped the GOP. You won’t have the funding of right wing billionaires at first but if you get enough momentum they will be pouring in to try and shape things.

          It’s all for naught though, once you start getting cheated out of every victory you fight for you’ll start sharpening the knife too.

  • @OceanSoap@lemmy.ml
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    917 days ago

    Keep pushing this message. Keep doubling down. I’m looking forward to the fact that most of you learn nothing, you insist the other side is just dumb, and you’ll scream so from your lungs as 2028 is an even bigger bloodbath for the Dems.

    California just voted to raise gas prices in CA by a full dollar in response to trump winning. Can’t make this shit up.

      • @OceanSoap@lemmy.ml
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        117 days ago

        Well, have you been watching the AZ senate ballot counts? So weird, they’ve started counting hundreds of ballots that only had votes for the Senate race, and not filled in for the house or the president.

        The idea that votes can be printed and harvested is not a conspiracy theory. I think in 2020, 20k votes for Biden were printed and counted at 3 in the morning, and anyone who tried to point out how sus that was, was immediately branded a voter denier and a conspiracy theorist.

        And I’m a smart gal, not a smart guy. :)

  • @Maggoty@lemmy.world
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    117 days ago

    The more I think about it the more I’m convinced her problem was Biden. The Democratic senators that are winning in the swing states spent an entire year separating themselves from Biden.

    Harris didn’t get that chance. She took over Biden’s campaign, his advisors, his ground network, his convention, 4 months before the election. If he had just recognized his time was over we could have had a real primary, with different campaigns to find the one that resonates with the people.

    • @sudo@programming.dev
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      217 days ago

      Biden absolutely fumbled this by even bothering to run. If there had been an open primary there would be some actual momentum behind the winner (which I doubt would’ve been Harris).

      • @Maggoty@lemmy.world
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        217 days ago

        I don’t care to speculate her chances in a primary. If she had won it then she’d have a campaign far more likely to energize the Democratic base. If someone else had won it then they would have a similar advantage. Not having it, and finding out in the worst way that we should have used the fucking 25th amendment is the original sin of this campaign.

  • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod
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    8019 days ago

    Republicans have a vision. Democrats have a list of policy proposals. Average people can grok the vision but since they read at a 6th grade level they don’t grok the policy proposals.

    Democrats need to stop acting like nerds if they want more people to like them.

    • @SleepyBear@lemmy.world
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      2319 days ago

      How the fuck do democrats win here then? After the Harris/Dump debate i feel like there was a lot of conjecture about how Harris didnt talk about policy enough. How do you get away with talking about policy but not “sounding like a nerd” to uneducated voters? See I think this is more about the average voter not being educated enough to understand the issues and the policies potential nominees have pertaining to them, or how their lives would be affected depending who/what they vote for.

      • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod
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        519 days ago

        i feel like there was a lot of conjecture about how Harris didnt talk about policy enough

        Yeah, from other nerds

      • @Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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        219 days ago

        The Democrats don’t win here.

        Just like the Tea Party transformed the GOP, we need a Guillotine Party to drag the Democratic party to the electorate.

      • @BakerBagel@midwest.social
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        2119 days ago

        Start offering policies that help average people. Run on medicare for all. Run on forcing pharmaceutical companies lowering drug prices. Run on building new factories to create solar panels, geothermal equipment, and wind turbines. Run on creating affordable housing and ending corporate landlords. Run on campaign finance reform with a promise of ending political ads that everyone hates.

        The Democrats problem is tha they won’t do any of that because their donors dont want it. But as long as the DNC values their donorsore than their voters, they will continue to lose elections.

        • @aesthelete@lemmy.world
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          18 days ago

          The Democrats problem is tha they won’t do any of that because their donors dont want it. But as long as the DNC values their donorsore than their voters, they will continue to lose elections.

          The entire American political system we have is dependent on big money donors since citizens united. America has been an oligarchy since at least the early 2000s. You will not get a Democratic party with policies that vary wildly from what industrial heads and CEOs want simply by voting (or not) every 2-4 years. And even small deviations from what they want aren’t tolerated by many of the oligarchs (e.g. Elon Musk).

    • Jesus
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      1119 days ago

      Republicans also like to defund public schools and or encourage people to go to religious private schools. That way they’re either too dumb to vote for policies, or too indoctrinated to vote for the candidate that isn’t promising Christian nationalism.

    • @SkybreakerEngineer@lemmy.world
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      519 days ago

      Democrats have a list of milquetoast, bottom of the barrel obvious stuff that they hope could show bipartisanship, and even then they half-ass it. There is real fixing that needs to get done, but the side they isn’t actively making things worse has no will to actually do it.

      • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod
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        19 days ago

        Democrat: *pushes up glasses, adjusts pocket protector* “Um, we propose to implement a 2-10% excise tax on health insurance plans which will allow us to increase access to Medicare by 16% according to these models.”

        Voters: “I just want health care.”

          • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod
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            419 days ago

            And I’d take some incremental improvements as long as their explanation of what happened ended with “this gets us closer to our goal of universal single payer.”

    • @PugJesus@lemmy.world
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      6119 days ago

      But I was told it was just that our policy proposals weren’t left enough?

      Unironically, you’re right. Most voters don’t vote based on any kind of coherent ideology. They vote on feels.

      God help us all.

      • @tootoughtoremember@lemmy.world
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        19 days ago

        I want a country where everyone pays less for healthcare. If it can be done for seniors, why not everyone else?

        I want a country where everyone’s private medical decisions remain between them and their doctor, without being cleared by your local, state, or federal representative or by a judge.

        I want a country where everyone who works, pays taxes, and does not commit violent crime or property theft can stay and keep working without having to look over their shoulder.

        I want a country where if you work full time, you can afford your rent/mortgage, put food on the table, start a family, and still be able to retire.

        There’s a vision. Apparently all of these things have become radically progressive leftist positions and are attacked as such by the media and conservatives alike.

        • @zephorah@lemm.ee
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          319 days ago

          With capitalism, a middle class does not occur organically, it is created by the governing body through subsidies. If you do not subsidize a middle class there can be no middle class. This is fundamental. We really started to feel it in 2015 or so. I called it the squeeze. This tightening grip of not subsidies but further attempts to squeeze more and more blood from rocks.

          Why? Our government has been subsidizing the wrong class for a while now. Trump did kick that up a notch the first time. The data is in. Trickle down economics doesn’t work.

          As with a middle class, health care has to be subsidized. The governing body won’t allow richer people to pay the same taxes as the poorest of us so that will never happen.

          And now Elon Musk is promising “hardship” going forward, as opposed to whatever this is the last 4 yrs, on us, the poorest, rather than paying mor taxes himself. Like that would impact his alien ass at all (he’s weirdly shaped, looks like a slightly melted wax museum figure, and was born into so much money he has no idea how humans live, that’s what I mean by alien). So don’t count on it ever happening going forward.

          If you have preexisting conditions expect loss of coverage. And as a fallout from that expect the healthcare system to get slammed with much sicker people trying to find loopholes and other diagnoses so they can actually keep living and working.

          • @aesthelete@lemmy.world
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            218 days ago

            The data is in. Trickle down economics doesn’t work.

            It works for the rich. Relatedly, shitty economies where the government pumps tons of cash into rich people’s pockets also work for the rich. They inflate their assets with their additional government handouts and use those inflated asset prices to get loans to buy more mega yachts.

        • Mak'
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          19 days ago

          See, the problem with all of these ideas is that they’re at odds with the billionaires’ vision that you slave away in servitude to them, while their imaginary worth line goes up to infinity.

          It’s really nothing more complex than that. And, as soon as the non-billionaire conservatives—your neighbors, your coworkers, the people you pass by every day—wake up and understand that they’re covered by that vision, too, the sooner things get better for all of us.

          • @Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world
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            118 days ago

            All of these social programs suddenly become much more popular when they are restricted to the majority population. There have been surveys demonstrating this. Another way to see it is to point to places with a lot of those policies, one of the first rebuttals you will receive is a yarn about the homogeneous population, or at least one far more so, in those places.

            So, it isn’t that they think they won’t be covered, it is because so many think it will cover people they don’t want it to.

      • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod
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        4919 days ago

        If the policy proposals were far left enough they’d start to look a helluva lot more like a vision.

          • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod
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            1019 days ago

            (I wasn’t sure whether to edit my comment or reply to your first post, so I’m putting this here)

            As for people voting on feels: I think that’s always been the case for most people. Most people are of average intelligence, with an average education and average interest in politics. They’re gonna vote based on vibes, so you have to get the vibes right or the average person won’t vote for you.

            And you can’t fake vibes by having a bunch of celebrities around.

            • TSG_Asmodeus (he, him)
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              419 days ago

              They’re gonna vote based on vibes, so you have to get the vibes right or the average person won’t vote for you.

              And you can’t fake vibes by having a bunch of celebrities around.

              So why’d they vote for a rapist who is in pictures with goddamn Epstein? That’s the part I don’t understand. Are we seriously saying the average (American) is okay with a rapist being president because they like his vibes?

              • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod
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                219 days ago

                They’re fucking weirdos with weird vibes.

                I’m much more interested in the folks who didn’t vote.

              • Captain Aggravated
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                419 days ago

                As far as I can tell, it’s not that people who would have otherwise voted for Kamala instead voted for Donald. It’s that people who would have otherwise voted for Kamala, including many of those who did vote for Biden, just stayed home. “We’ve got policy plans and whatever” yeah that would never make it to implementation through a gridlocked congress and a hostile supreme court.

                • TSG_Asmodeus (he, him)
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                  118 days ago

                  It’s that people who would have otherwise voted for Kamala, including many of those who did vote for Biden, just stayed home. “We’ve got policy plans and whatever” yeah that would never make it to implementation through a gridlocked congress and a hostile supreme court.

                  I honestly think you’re giving them more credit than they deserve. My point is that a _rapist, fascist, cruel, racist, misogynist who has said aloud all the horrible things he will do was running for office and a lot of people just shrugged their shoulders and refused to vote. I can’t imagine that kind of apathy when a fascist is taking over. “Sure Hitler and the Nazi’s are bad, but what am I going to do, vote socialist?”

                  image

                  (Also this because people need to remember he was anti-capitalist as well.)

            • @seaQueue@lemmy.world
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              19 days ago

              Clinton 1 and Obama were our last successful Dem candidates. You need a charismatic candidate with a consistent message that speaks to everyone if you want to win the popularity contest. Gore, Clinton 2 and Harris failed on both of those counts. Biden won only because of pandemic and government abuse/mismanagement backlash, he would have lost to Trump in other circumstances.

    • @TheEighthDoctor@lemmy.world
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      117 days ago

      Democrats need to stop acting like nerds if they want more people to like them.

      If you told me this was a quote from Ideocracy I would not have doubted you for a second.

    • IninewCrow
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      1019 days ago

      How about do basic stuff that people understand …

      … like tax the hell out of billionaires and use the money on people in the country.

      … stop financing overseas wars and use that free money on people in the country

      … then just keep repeating and blasting everyone that all the money the government is collecting from rich idiots and not spending on war is being spent on everyone … rinse, repeat 10,000 times.

      • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod
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        1319 days ago

        Yep. And there’s precedent for this. (Even though with this Supreme Court precedent counts for jack shit…)

        Every time Bernie got asked a question he’d turn it around to mentioning the top 1% and how they’re fucking us over. And people liked him for it. I had MAGA hat folks tell me they liked him because of it back in 2016.

          • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod
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            819 days ago

            Yeah but they wouldn’t say that about anyone else I can think of. And we’re not trying to get MAGA, we’re trying to get people to fucking vote at all.

          • @BakerBagel@midwest.social
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            419 days ago

            Because the DNC sceapped those proposals for more neoliberal bullshit that every one hates. People are vocal about what they care about. If people tell me they want steak and i keep giving them tacos, they are going to leave the restaurant and get pizza from the sketchy local joint next door instead.

            • @Montagge@lemmy.zip
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              119 days ago

              What proposals for what neoliberal bullshit.

              Also neoliberal policies from a neoliberal party?!? Surely you jest!

              • @frosty99c@midwest.social
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                619 days ago

                If a neoliberal party can’t win 2 out of 3 elections against a fascist, maybe they should pivot away from neoliberalism.

                • @Montagge@lemmy.zip
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                  119 days ago

                  To what exactly? Neoliberalism is left wing in this shit hole.

                  Don’t say progressive. If that was popular there would be more than two states that have a progressive party.

    • There was an era where the nerds placed up a facade to give the illusion of meritocracy and measured governance. Unfortunately that just drove a wedge between people and the “ruling class.” When it came out that bill was getting blowies in the oval office people’s brains broke and the facade was forever tarnished. Today, democrats still hide behind it and pretend like we don’t know they piss and shit like everyone else. The Republicans decided to erect a monument to trump their lord and savior, the only thing keeping them from being a foot note in the history books.

      We need to look to our founders. Flawed in every way possible they did have one idea that we should still cherish. They believed in an america they could make by their own hands. They did, it sucked, it was also amazing somehow. We should be like them but be just as kind to our future as we are to the present.

    • magic_lobster_party
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      419 days ago

      Do they have a vision? The scary thing about Trump that it’s uncertain what he will do the next 4 years. Will he undo democracy or keep it? Will he continue to support Ukraine or not? Will he leave NATO or not? Will he impose those tariffs or not? Will he apply project 2025 or not? Will he impose a federal abortion ban or not?

      Kamala had a clear but boring vision: 4 more years of the current status quo. Nothing new will happen.

      • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod
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        1119 days ago

        It’s right there on the hat: Make America Great Again.

        And the neat part is it’s so vague that people can project whatever they want onto it.

        • magic_lobster_party
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          219 days ago

          Well that part I’m aware of, but that’s more of a slogan rather than a vision. It doesn’t tell what has gone wrong with America and how to fix it. Trump says a lot of things that sometimes contradict each other or may or may not be taken seriously, so it’s difficult to piece together a concrete vision.

          They have a concept of a vision so to say.

  • DukeHawthorne
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    817 days ago

    Harris’ messaging problem is the same problem Hilary Clinton had in 2016. Instead of appealing to the base, she went after Republicans and just assumed the left would be on board. The Democratic establishment does this every time, move closer to the center and right and tell the leftists shut up and go away.

    • @PriorityMotif@lemmy.world
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      417 days ago

      The average Democrat is a well off person living in the suburbs who doesn’t want higher taxes but doesn’t want to appear racist.

      • @sudo@programming.dev
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        117 days ago

        I wouldn’t call that the average general democrat voter but that for sure is the average democrat primary voter by like 90%.

  • @voldage@lemmy.world
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    1619 days ago

    She didn’t? I believe that’s exactly what she came across as when she said she wouldn’t do anything different if she were to call the shots instead of Biden and also reminded everyone she signed off on most of his decisions. Sure, she lost votes because of sexism as well, but instead of fresh air she chose to bring stale coffin smell to the fart battle and lost to the stink Trump was all too happy to discharge. And that coffin did smell of a old white dude, let me tell you.

    That being said, for such a gigantic loss against someone as obnoxious as Trump, there had to be a lot of factors in play. Sexism and stagnation of the party being just a tip of the iceberg.

  • @AA5B@lemmy.world
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    617 days ago

    Maybe it’s as simple as: outrage is memorable, policy is boring. For all too many voters, all they remember is the last thing that outraged them.

    I don’t know how you work with that though, since people on the left seem to care more about policy, character, platform.

    But maybe it tracks back to the “shift yo center” right before the election. I know it’s an attempt to attract any remaining undecideds and avoid last minute mistakes but that clearly didn’t work.

    I don’t know if it’s just my echo chamber, but Harris, and waltz, both came out in the stage in a flood of emotion. They were live, genuine, caring. I know Trump tried to belittle Harris’ smile and laugh but she pulled it off. She seemed genuine and alive, in contrast to that ancient senile tyrant. Her rise was emotional, and in a good way. Then as the election approached, they became too cautious and lost that emotional jet engine that had them zooming into the sky

    • @UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      117 days ago

      policy is boring

      Means testing everything to the Nth disagree is enervating.

      Yesterday I announced that, as president, I’ll establish a student loan debt forgiveness program for Pell Grant recipients who start a business that operates for three years in disadvantaged communities.

      Is bad policy. Not in the same way that mass deportation is bad. But when you ask where the 15M voters went between Biden parroting Warren/Sanders on universal student debt relief and this, go ahead and ask how many people you know who will qualify.

      Harris, and waltz, both came out in the stage in a flood of emotion. They were live, genuine, caring.

      Maybe Walz was different. Idk. He didn’t get nearly as much limelight as Liz Cheney, so it was harder to tell.

      But Harris wasn’t caring in the slightest. Between going to Guatemala and telling refugees “Do Not Come”, dismissing student debtors as entitled, downplaying the damage caused by inflation, and cheering on the police raids of college campuses over student protests, what we got was a woman whose deep genuine affections were exclusive to her in-group.

      Gore and Kerry and Hilary all had the same problems. It was Republican versus Republican-Lite time after time.

      • @AA5B@lemmy.world
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        116 days ago

        going to Guatemala and telling refugees “Do Not Come”

        And yet that may be the best course. All too many undocumented immigrants are refugees in some way, desperate to escape their circumstances or find better circumstances. Tiffany were not going to welcome them and help them build their version of the American Dream, there is no humane or just way to stop them. Do you want human trafficking? immigrant camps that are essentially prisons? build a wall? Military patrols at the border? Mass deportation? There is no good answer, but the current ones aren’t working. Staying in a safe-ish spot closer to where you are and doing it legally may be most humane, may come closest to serving both their needs and US needs.

  • @RedAggroBest@lemmy.world
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    1318 days ago

    The only messaging problem was taking the momentum of the debate and shitting on it with the right-wing heelturn the moment the Cheneys said “never Trump”.

  • @archonet@lemy.lol
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    619 days ago

    Okay but this post would imply Trump is white.

    I’d need to crank up the color temperature on his photos quite a bit to achieve that.

    • @Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      418 days ago

      I’m fairly certain that a transwoman would have done even worse in polls. It does make me wonder how a transman would fare, though.

    • @UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      A big part of the election was Republicans screaming at Democrats for being too feminine and Democrats retorting “That’s good aktuly”.

      But compared to Biden’s promise of college debt relief, climate change relief, child care and reduction of health care costs, that didn’t motivate people who weren’t heavily invested in the fight. Also, plus, too, we rolled back all the universal mail in voting from 2020. As Dems were the most likely to mail in their ballots, they suffered disproportionately

      • @aesthelete@lemmy.world
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        318 days ago

        Also, plus, too, we rolled back all the universal mail in voting from 2020. As Dems were the most likely to mail in their ballots, they suffered disproportionately

        I have no idea why I haven’t seen this point made before. I’ve thought it several times myself. There’s absolutely no way that didn’t play a role in this election cycle.