news 2024 US Election Megathread 🇺🇸🏛️

[Bloo]

25 minutes ago, XDNA said:

I think people know the difference between conservative and liberal.

How? How would they? Kamala is someone who claims to be a liberal and says she’s going to put Republicans in her administration, brags about owning a Glock, and talks about building a wall. Kamala did not distinguish herself from Trump so I can’t blame people for not knowing the difference. Further, the broader Democratic Party is not that different from the GOP.  The main difference is the GOP is socially conservative and the Democrats are socially centrist. They don’t advocate for marginalized communities, they advocate for not hating marginalized communities. 
 

Both parties love war. Both parties take money from billionaires and major corporations. Both parties support Israel’s genocide. Both parties do not take climate change seriously. 
 

So, yes, these words don’t mean anything. This has nothing to do with people being too “dumb” to not know the difference. The parties have little material differences between them. 

[Armani?]

31 minutes ago, nooniebao said:

 

Assuming the Hispanic voter margins are more for this since nearly all the polls underestimated the Hispanic vote for Trump

[Sannie]

2 hours ago, Marianah Adkins said:

Centrist DemocRATS stay being deluded lmao

 

Data: "Millions of voters stayed at home, depressing turnout"

 

Centrists: "We need to go further right!" "Also **** all those who voted for Trump, all those who stayed home, y'all are braindead, evil, sexist, misogynist, pro rapist, over populist, -ist-ist, etc!"

 

Jill Stein's shill ass barely made a dent and yet they spent millions of dollars attacking her in ads as if she was the biggest threat in the election. And the data in the end proved that it didnt matter because what ultimately did the Dems in was their learned spinelessness in everything. 

No one is saying we need to go further right. This is a lie you guys keep telling yourselves.   What people are saying is that we have to take certain issues, like immigration, seriously as the country seems to think it's a bigger problem than it actually is. Taking it seriously means at the very minimum pretending like we want to curb immigration to appease the general public, not promote doing nothing like leftists want. Kamala lost by supposedly "running to her right" but the country went even further right so the answer isn't running back to the left either. If the left had a proven track record of voting then you'd have a point here.

 

Ultimately, what it seems like is that neither left nor right was the answer and the Dems were going to be toast no matter what. The pendulum will keep swinging, but leftists aren't going to accept that because being right and feeling virtuous is always the main point in their ideology.

 

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I can see him trying to make an exception to appease the farmers like he did in the past, but that would just mean most of the people he promised to deport won't be deported.  

Edited Monday at 06:59 PM by Sannie

[DAP]

3 hours ago, nooniebao said:

 

So the choices will be either her or Gavin Newsom then?

 

[nooniebao]

 

 

 

 

[XDNA]

1 hour ago, Bloo said:

How? How would they? Kamala is someone who claims to be a liberal and says she's going to put Republicans in her administration, brags about owning a Glock, and talks about building a wall. Kamala did not distinguish herself from Trump so I can't blame people for not knowing the difference. Further, the broader Democratic Party is not that different from the GOP.  The main difference is the GOP is socially conservative and the Democrats are socially centrist. They don't advocate for marginalized communities, they advocate for not hating marginalized communities. 
 

Both parties love war. Both parties take money from billionaires and major corporations. Both parties support Israel's genocide. Both parties do not take climate change seriously. 
 

So, yes, these words don't mean anything. This has nothing to do with people being too "dumb" to not know the difference. The parties have little material differences between them. 

Between the parties, I'd argue the main difference is tax policy and business regulation. Then it's social safety net programs, social issues, and environmental policy. 

Historically, both parties are similar on foreign policy. Although recently at least the MAGA movement has been more isolationist and supportive of Russia.

 

The words do have meaning to people though. As it means something to people's identity, and that's even more so now in today's polarized times. So I respectfully agree to disagree on that.

 

 

 

[Bloo]

48 minutes ago, XDNA said:

The words do have meaning to people though. As it means something to people's identity, and that's even more so now in today's polarized times. So I respectfully agree to disagree on that.

My point is that these words mean different things to different people. To some, "liberal" means communist, to others (like myself) "liberal" means conservative—(neo)liberalism as an economic theory is literally what underlies modern day capitalism. 

 

It is worthless looking at data of how people respond to a word that does not have a universally-agreed upon definition.

 

As an example, we can look at the data where people have a more negative opinion of Obamacare as opposed to the Affordable Care Act. These are obviously the exact same thing, but verbiage matters because people don't agree with what Obamacare is. Some think it's big, bad socialized medicine. Others think it's the Affordable Care Act.

Quote

Now for the difference: 29 percent of the public supports Obamacare compared with 22 percent who support ACA. Forty-six percent oppose Obamacare and 37 percent oppose ACA. So putting Obama in the name raises the positives and the negatives. Gender and partisanship are responsible for the differences. Men, independents and Republicans are more negative on Obamacare than ACA. Young people, Democrats, nonwhites and women are more positive on Obamacare.

https://www.kff.org/affordable-care-act/poll-finding/5-charts-about-public-opinion-on-the-affordable-care-act/

 

Similarly, for universal healthcare, the language matters a great deal. Compare "Medicare-for-All" versus "socialized medicine". 

 

https://www.kff.org/affordable-care-act/perspective/medicare-for-all-vs-single-payer-the-impact-of-labels/

 

——

 

My argument is simply that there is no universal agreement on what the terms "liberal" and "conservative" mean.

 

So, we shouldn't place so much emphasis on how people feel about these terms when we're discussing policy. Policy and political identity are very different things. They are not concordant with one another. It makes no sense to make broad-sweeping generalizations about how people feel about a policy idea because they feel some way about a political identity. These things do not have a 1:1 matching.

[Vermillion]

The She the People event's black women booing Bernie's speech section on marching for MLK and then Chris Matthews' corporate neolib meltdown comparing his seismic support with Latinos in the Nevada caucus to the Nazi invasion of France are both seminal symbols of Dems division and non-productive intersectionality emphasis over economic justice.

 

While Bernie's fatally tone deaf tweet after Trump's election was a willfully ignorant symbol of multiple blindspots that came across as feeling obligated to emphasize that Trump supporters were well intentioned by stating that not all of them were racist and sexist as if they were the ones that needed to be coddled and if he hadn't said anything he was condoning accusations of their complicity in the furtherance of minority scapegoating, when they were in fact complicit, if not silently supportive, according to multiple studies, especially PRRI.

 

Fine…fine.

 

With a party in disarray, I know this Monday morning quarterbacking was inevitable but I'm already over dissecting Bernie 2016 and Bernie 2020 again. Only unpacked this briefly again because of that Jacobin article.

 

The factions are going to continue impugning motives of each other without an individual to rally behind.

 

What I want more than anything else at the moment are

 

1) Direct from Barack Obama answers as to his lobbying for the mass "moderate" drop-out in early 2020 of the primary for the mass coalescing behind Joe

 

2) Direct from Dr. Fauci answers (without Rand Paul showboating) as to why he thought continued gain-of-function research was worth the risk during Obama's term, and why he thought continued support from NIH for any labs globally without Level 3 safety protocols was worth the risk

 

3) Direct from AOC answers as to why she didn't sign on to the hypothetical on Bernie's resolution for an arms embargo and the other actual Israel bills. What did Nancy tell her during that infamous C-SPAN video coverage of the House floor on another Israel vote where she on the verge of tears and was it about AIPAC.

 

4) Direct from Bernie answers as to who he sees as a successor and if he is in fact pursuing a third party

[Sergi91]

Very well said 

 

[LIT]

Biden is spending his last days in office…defending Netanyahu from international law. 

[FameFatale]

One of my coworkers just asked me if I was a patriot

 

[XDNA]

As students across the country were demanding that universities divest from Israel's indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza last year, Pam Bondi said that they should be deported or investigated by the FBI.

https://bsky.app/profile/truthout.org/post/3lbsfks5x7c2g

[dman4life]

I've finally come to terms with the election and Trump being president elect. Like I've said before in this thread I'm completely over it and frankly don't care what happens to this country, I know that's bad but those are my honest feelings. I've accepted Biden, Harris, the Obamas, and the Clintons are collasal failures in keeping the coalition together. Mainly Biden.

 

HOWEVER after today's news the one thing that doesn't sit right and will likely never sit right with me is Merrick Garland like what the actual f***??? I feel he owes America an explanation for this bs, not that anyone gives af atp!

Edited Monday at 10:18 PM by dman4life

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[Bloo]

1 hour ago, LIT said:

Biden is spending his last days in office…defending Netanyahu from international law. 

He's such an embarrassment. I hope history rightfully remembers him as a complete failure of a president.

[Bloo]

5 minutes ago, Vermillion said:

 

Last time she did this, she ended up in 13th place. Have at it, Caitlyn. 

[Vermillion]

 

[Vermillion]