7 ms·

Blue no matter who. 2024, 2026, 2028. This was preventable

Etheryte 2y ago
I'm not from the US, so I don't really have a direct horse in this race. Don't you think that polarization like this is exactly what led to the current situation? Culture begets counter culture and demonizing the other side turns into a rallying call in turn.
- tdb7893 2y ago
  There's also a lot more nuance here and I definitely wouldn't say demonization of Democrats as a party is what lead to the current situation, that's seems a very oversimplified take. I would say more demonization of LGBT people, immigrants, scientists, government workers, media, etc. and demonization of those people is very different than demonizing the partisan apparatuses. I'm honestly on board with hating the Democrat political apparatus. You should be allowed to hate on a political party, it's weird to think that's inherently an issue (especially in the current climate). I think a big part of the problem is in the US we're only allowed 2 parties so if one doesn't stuff you find unacceptable you sorta just need to support the other. Gotta love the "land of the free".
  - Etheryte 2y ago
    That's all fair, but you do understand that a large part of your point boils down to saying the problem isn't us demonizing them, the problem is them demonizing us, right?
    - tdb7893 2y ago
      I'm saying demonizing political organizations isn't a problem, demonizing broad classes of people is. For example: there's a difference between saying immigrants are "poisoning the blood of our country" (direct Trump quote) and "I would never vote for a Republican". The latter is generally fine and expected in any democracy. People have party preferences. Edit: there's also context and matters of degree that matter here but this is an HN comment and I'm not gonna write an essay.
      - astroid 2y ago
        Since OP didn't find it appropriate to include the context, I'll do it for them: https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/10/04/trump-poison-blood-quote/ https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/10/04/trump-poison-blood-qu... -- not even Snopes agrees with this take, and it is wildly out of context. This out of context take was started by Hasan Piker, a billionaire (or maybe multimillionaire I forget) zoomer streamer self professed 'socialist' lol: "I was up in New Hampshire the other day. The biggest complaint they have—it’s with all of the problems going on in the world, many of the problems caused by Hillary Clinton and by Barack Obama. All of the problems—the single biggest problem is heroin that pours across our southern border. It’s just pouring and destroying their youth. It’s poisoning the blood of their youth and plenty of other people. We have to have strong borders. We have to keep the drugs out of our country. We are—right now, we’re getting the drugs, they’re getting the cash. We need strong borders. We need absolute—we cannot give amnesty." I don't really like the phrase because it is definitely easy to use out of context - but heroin and fentanyl are in fact poisoing the blood of this country, and eliminating that is an admirable goal. There is another quote where he uses the phrase and you can see the full video/context, but the bottom line is not even snopes can get on board with this interpretation and they definitely would if they could manage. They once claimed a convicted terrorist wasn't a terrorist because there was no universally accepted definition of terrorism, since 'The Weather Underground' were a democrat-aligned group and they will bow down to anything left. And yet, they still don't agree with what is being claimed here.... The other quote was also in reference to drugs: "TRUMP: No, nobody has ever seen anything like this. And I think we could say worldwide. I think you could go to the... you could go to a banana republic and pick the worst one, and you're not going to see what we're witnessing now. No control whatsoever. Nobody has any idea where these people are coming from, and we know they come from prisons. We know they come from mental institutions [and] insane asylums. We know they're terrorists. Nobody has ever seen anything like we're witnessing right now. It is a very sad thing for our country. It's poisoning the blood of our country. It's so bad, and people are coming in with disease. People are coming in with every possible thing that you could have. And I got to know a lot of the heads of these countries. They're very cunning people. Very street-smart people. If they're not street-smart, they're not going to be there very long. And when they send up those caravans, and I had it ended, we had the safest border in the history of our country, meaning the history, over the last 80 years. Before that, I assume it was probably not so bad. There was nobody around. But, we had the safest in recorded history by far. The least amount of drugs in many, many decades.*" Can you make a fake argument that this is implying race mixing is bad? I guess, but you'd be a liar. It is very clear he was using what is in my opinion a terribly worded phrase due to the ease of taking it out of context.... but you would be a liar if you said whattdb7893 said.
- archagon 2y ago
  Yes; but in my view, one of the political parties in the country has gone completely off the rails. I was raised right and actually have some core values, so how can I respect someone who enthusiastically voted for president “grab ‘em by the pussy”? There is nothing left to demonize: his sins and crimes are completely out in the open and his followers love 'em. An impeached felon and rapist who tried to blatantly steal the last election is our head of state, and I feel like I have nothing in common with half the country anymore. In truth, though, I don't think much of this is organic. Right-wing TV and radio (Gingrich, Limbaugh, Carlson, etc.) have been rotting brains around the country for decades. Our current situation is the result of a concerted propaganda campaign by the powerful and wealthy going all the way back to the Nixon impeachment, not some day-to-day disagreements about taxes or culture war issues.
  - tstrimple 2y ago
    And it’s strong and consistent propaganda. It’s amazing to watch one right wing troll on Twitter state explicitly that he’s going to target the phrase CRT for demonization and within a week all conservative influences, news stations and politicians are talking about how awful CRT in our schools is. All of them sending the same message over and over again completely fabricating a drama out of nothing. And it works. Over and over again from migrant caravans to sharia law to immigrants eating your cats and dogs. Just blatant lies repeated enough completely warps peoples brains. Just look at how many conservatives believe Kamala wants free gender surgery for illegal immigrants and post birth abortions. There are literally tens of millions of people in this country with zero grasp on reality. I lost my own father to this pipeline. He is basically the “How I lost my father to Fox News” case except it was AM radio over decades as a long haul truck driver. He went from being an intellectually curious atheist to a Bible thumping trumper who constantly rants about Muslims coming to kill us all. The man has never met a Muslim in his life. I don’t recognize him anymore. I lost my mom to this too. She was turned anti-vax during covid and ended up dying to it in 2022. She successfully beat lung cancer after smoking all her life and then wouldn’t take the most basic precautions she had provided to her kids when we were growing up without any controversy and Covid won.
    - 2y ago
- lbrito 2y ago
  "Polarization" is an awful, borderline evil way to understand the world today. I hate that is mainstream. Every single time an extreme right-wing populist runs against any opponent who is _not_ extreme right-wing, the media portrays the election as a "sad reminder of our polarized world". That is absolute bullshit. Anywhere in the world, the histrionics, the deranged conspiracy theories, the chtonic racialism always come from one side alone, while the other side - which is more often than not garden variety right-wing, mind you - mumbles "let's not do that". But somehow mainstream media successfully portrays this dynamic as "polarization" and "a fight between two extremes".
- watwut 2y ago
  I do not think op has duty to enable. It is not even polarization to say you wont vote for a party.
queuebert 2y ago
Blue no matter who is exactly how we got here. DNC needs to start now coming up with a platform and a viable candidate. They need to retire the geriatrics and start cultivating new young blood.
- DinoDad13 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - account42 2y ago
    Maybe at least attempt to understand other people's position before screeching "fascist" at everyone you consider to be an opponent.
  - drawkward 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - DinoDad13 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - drawkward 2y ago
        [flagged]
        queuebert 2y ago
        Comments like this give me hope that we can pull through.
        drawkward 2y ago
        I used to be in Teach For America. It taught me a few things: -The vast majority of humans all want the same things, basically Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. -We are more similar than different. -Try to understand people's motivations before you criticize their politics. I've been approached by TFA-adjacent orgs on several occasions to try to get me to run for statewide office. I'd do it, except for the fact that it would mean an 80% pay cut. If I did not have a spouse and kids, it would be something to consider.
DinoDad13 2y ago
[flagged]
- drawkward 2y ago
  I, too, was a teenager once.
drawkward 2y ago
No. I demand better of the Democrats than what has been offered.
- yladiz 2y ago
  And if they don’t give someone better, in your opinion, then what next? Inaction?
  - jayGlow 2y ago
    vote for a different party that aligns with your views?
    - PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
      with the voting system present in the US, it is essentially impossible for a 3rd party to come into existence that has any hope of significant federal or even state level power.
    - anigbrowl 2y ago
      The USA is the opposite of pluralistic. No third party has managed to build any serious political infrastructure at the local level and expand it regionally or nationally. That's why there are so many frivolous third party candidates for president; they're desperate to get a percentage of votes that will generate some federal funding to sustain organizational growth, and running for President is one of the few ways to get sufficient attention for that nationally.
    - timeon 2y ago
      Yes that is normal thing to do in pluralist democracies. Unfortunately not an option in two-party system.
    - saturn8601 2y ago
      The third party in the US is an amalgamation of the leftover scraps of losers that couldn't make it in the other parties. Because that's exactly what the Greens and to a lesser extent Libertarians are. To be fair it is wonderful that Howie Hawkins has managed to get the Greens on the ballot in 36 or so states. Its crazy that you can't even vote for this party in all states. But the vote count is horrendous. The best this country has ever done in recent memory was Ralph Nader and he was a someone famous that could move the needle....he still only got 2.74% of the vote.
code_for_monkey 2y ago
the dems could have won easily if they ran a half way competent campaign
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
scarecrowbob 2y ago
Yeah, I think everyone knows this was preventable. The idea that "people failed the Dems" causes me a lot of anger at this point, because the folks who had the power to prevent this preferred to slip ever rightward in their platform instead of recognizing any number of highly popular non-conservative positions. People often say "elections have consequences" but they are rarely saying "the democrats need to take this as an objective lesson about how badly they failed to represent their constituencies". Instead Democratic party apologists go into fantasies about Bernie Bros and Russian Interference, while they materially fail to do literally anything useful about the very real current issues. The Democrats need to understand that the election was so close that they could have won if they hadn't worked against themselves at the party level at every turn- if they had a primary of any kind they might have won. I absolutely don't agree that "voting blue" would have fixed this- I think this is the consequence of "voting blue" in 2020 and giving the DNC the idea that they can literally run a piece of toast and win against trump.
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  I tend to agree. I think the early energy of the Harris campaign was in part because the highly paid centrist consultants hadn't gotten their hooks in yet; there was a notable shift in tone as "these people are fucking weird" disappeared and "we've got Cheney endorsing us!" replaced it. I get, to some extent, why they're gun shy on this; centrism feels like it should be compelling with a crazy person on the other end... but I think the party needs to run an AOC style firebrand soon. Time to at least attempt being a bit leftist for once.
  - almosthere 2y ago
    I mean if you're going to be for "leftism" it might need to be redefined because the reason your side lost (the side I used to be on) is that it went fucking nuts.
  - roughly 2y ago
    The next person to suggest the Dems need to swing right needs to be thrown in a volcano, or at least outed as an obvious fifth columnist. Harris ran so far to the right she was campaigning with Liz Cheney on being tough on immigration, and she lost the election to a geriatric felon autocrat with no coherent plans because Democratic turnout was down. There’s no credible argument for that style of campaign anymore, and anyone suggesting otherwise is either dangerously incompetent or dangerously disingenuous.
latentcall 2y ago
I am actively balking at this. The Democrats did this to the country by having zero likable or relatable candidates and alienating the actual left of this country. Tim Walz was likable and relatable to middle America but he wasn’t running for president. The DNC has acted so undemocratic it is flabbergasting. We need a different party comprised of working class Americans who want to take care of the working class and not corporate interests. Reject culture war nonsense and frame this for what it is, a class war. If the response to Luigi wasn’t telling enough, I don’t know. The sentiment is there. Just need to fan the flames.
- saturn8601 2y ago
  Sounds great, how do you propose we do this? I'd like to hear your thoughts as the Sanders people have probably already tried it in the last eight years. You haven't seen the Democratic party perform at their best until you have seen them block and destroy an outsider that threatens them. Ask Sanders, ask anyone in the Squad. Hell there is even an excellent documentary on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCSo2hZRcXk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCSo2hZRcXk

I'm not from the US, so I don't really have a direct horse in this race. Don't you think that polarization like this is exactly what led to the current situation? Culture begets counter culture and demonizing the other side turns into a rallying call in turn.

tdb7893 2y ago
There's also a lot more nuance here and I definitely wouldn't say demonization of Democrats as a party is what lead to the current situation, that's seems a very oversimplified take. I would say more demonization of LGBT people, immigrants, scientists, government workers, media, etc. and demonization of those people is very different than demonizing the partisan apparatuses. I'm honestly on board with hating the Democrat political apparatus. You should be allowed to hate on a political party, it's weird to think that's inherently an issue (especially in the current climate). I think a big part of the problem is in the US we're only allowed 2 parties so if one doesn't stuff you find unacceptable you sorta just need to support the other. Gotta love the "land of the free".
- Etheryte 2y ago
  That's all fair, but you do understand that a large part of your point boils down to saying the problem isn't us demonizing them, the problem is them demonizing us, right?
  - tdb7893 2y ago
    I'm saying demonizing political organizations isn't a problem, demonizing broad classes of people is. For example: there's a difference between saying immigrants are "poisoning the blood of our country" (direct Trump quote) and "I would never vote for a Republican". The latter is generally fine and expected in any democracy. People have party preferences. Edit: there's also context and matters of degree that matter here but this is an HN comment and I'm not gonna write an essay.
    - astroid 2y ago
      Since OP didn't find it appropriate to include the context, I'll do it for them: https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/10/04/trump-poison-blood-quote/ https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/10/04/trump-poison-blood-qu... -- not even Snopes agrees with this take, and it is wildly out of context. This out of context take was started by Hasan Piker, a billionaire (or maybe multimillionaire I forget) zoomer streamer self professed 'socialist' lol: "I was up in New Hampshire the other day. The biggest complaint they have—it’s with all of the problems going on in the world, many of the problems caused by Hillary Clinton and by Barack Obama. All of the problems—the single biggest problem is heroin that pours across our southern border. It’s just pouring and destroying their youth. It’s poisoning the blood of their youth and plenty of other people. We have to have strong borders. We have to keep the drugs out of our country. We are—right now, we’re getting the drugs, they’re getting the cash. We need strong borders. We need absolute—we cannot give amnesty." I don't really like the phrase because it is definitely easy to use out of context - but heroin and fentanyl are in fact poisoing the blood of this country, and eliminating that is an admirable goal. There is another quote where he uses the phrase and you can see the full video/context, but the bottom line is not even snopes can get on board with this interpretation and they definitely would if they could manage. They once claimed a convicted terrorist wasn't a terrorist because there was no universally accepted definition of terrorism, since 'The Weather Underground' were a democrat-aligned group and they will bow down to anything left. And yet, they still don't agree with what is being claimed here.... The other quote was also in reference to drugs: "TRUMP: No, nobody has ever seen anything like this. And I think we could say worldwide. I think you could go to the... you could go to a banana republic and pick the worst one, and you're not going to see what we're witnessing now. No control whatsoever. Nobody has any idea where these people are coming from, and we know they come from prisons. We know they come from mental institutions [and] insane asylums. We know they're terrorists. Nobody has ever seen anything like we're witnessing right now. It is a very sad thing for our country. It's poisoning the blood of our country. It's so bad, and people are coming in with disease. People are coming in with every possible thing that you could have. And I got to know a lot of the heads of these countries. They're very cunning people. Very street-smart people. If they're not street-smart, they're not going to be there very long. And when they send up those caravans, and I had it ended, we had the safest border in the history of our country, meaning the history, over the last 80 years. Before that, I assume it was probably not so bad. There was nobody around. But, we had the safest in recorded history by far. The least amount of drugs in many, many decades.*" Can you make a fake argument that this is implying race mixing is bad? I guess, but you'd be a liar. It is very clear he was using what is in my opinion a terribly worded phrase due to the ease of taking it out of context.... but you would be a liar if you said whattdb7893 said.
archagon 2y ago
Yes; but in my view, one of the political parties in the country has gone completely off the rails. I was raised right and actually have some core values, so how can I respect someone who enthusiastically voted for president “grab ‘em by the pussy”? There is nothing left to demonize: his sins and crimes are completely out in the open and his followers love 'em. An impeached felon and rapist who tried to blatantly steal the last election is our head of state, and I feel like I have nothing in common with half the country anymore. In truth, though, I don't think much of this is organic. Right-wing TV and radio (Gingrich, Limbaugh, Carlson, etc.) have been rotting brains around the country for decades. Our current situation is the result of a concerted propaganda campaign by the powerful and wealthy going all the way back to the Nixon impeachment, not some day-to-day disagreements about taxes or culture war issues.
- tstrimple 2y ago
  And it’s strong and consistent propaganda. It’s amazing to watch one right wing troll on Twitter state explicitly that he’s going to target the phrase CRT for demonization and within a week all conservative influences, news stations and politicians are talking about how awful CRT in our schools is. All of them sending the same message over and over again completely fabricating a drama out of nothing. And it works. Over and over again from migrant caravans to sharia law to immigrants eating your cats and dogs. Just blatant lies repeated enough completely warps peoples brains. Just look at how many conservatives believe Kamala wants free gender surgery for illegal immigrants and post birth abortions. There are literally tens of millions of people in this country with zero grasp on reality. I lost my own father to this pipeline. He is basically the “How I lost my father to Fox News” case except it was AM radio over decades as a long haul truck driver. He went from being an intellectually curious atheist to a Bible thumping trumper who constantly rants about Muslims coming to kill us all. The man has never met a Muslim in his life. I don’t recognize him anymore. I lost my mom to this too. She was turned anti-vax during covid and ended up dying to it in 2022. She successfully beat lung cancer after smoking all her life and then wouldn’t take the most basic precautions she had provided to her kids when we were growing up without any controversy and Covid won.
  - 2y ago
lbrito 2y ago
"Polarization" is an awful, borderline evil way to understand the world today. I hate that is mainstream. Every single time an extreme right-wing populist runs against any opponent who is _not_ extreme right-wing, the media portrays the election as a "sad reminder of our polarized world". That is absolute bullshit. Anywhere in the world, the histrionics, the deranged conspiracy theories, the chtonic racialism always come from one side alone, while the other side - which is more often than not garden variety right-wing, mind you - mumbles "let's not do that". But somehow mainstream media successfully portrays this dynamic as "polarization" and "a fight between two extremes".
watwut 2y ago
I do not think op has duty to enable. It is not even polarization to say you wont vote for a party.

queuebert 2y ago

Blue no matter who is exactly how we got here. DNC needs to start now coming up with a platform and a viable candidate. They need to retire the geriatrics and start cultivating new young blood.

DinoDad13 2y ago
[flagged]
- account42 2y ago
  Maybe at least attempt to understand other people's position before screeching "fascist" at everyone you consider to be an opponent.
- drawkward 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - DinoDad13 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - drawkward 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - queuebert 2y ago
        Comments like this give me hope that we can pull through.
        drawkward 2y ago
        I used to be in Teach For America. It taught me a few things: -The vast majority of humans all want the same things, basically Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. -We are more similar than different. -Try to understand people's motivations before you criticize their politics. I've been approached by TFA-adjacent orgs on several occasions to try to get me to run for statewide office. I'd do it, except for the fact that it would mean an 80% pay cut. If I did not have a spouse and kids, it would be something to consider.

DinoDad13 2y ago

[flagged]

drawkward 2y ago
I, too, was a teenager once.

drawkward 2y ago

No. I demand better of the Democrats than what has been offered.

yladiz 2y ago
And if they don’t give someone better, in your opinion, then what next? Inaction?
- jayGlow 2y ago
  vote for a different party that aligns with your views?
  - PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
    with the voting system present in the US, it is essentially impossible for a 3rd party to come into existence that has any hope of significant federal or even state level power.
  - anigbrowl 2y ago
    The USA is the opposite of pluralistic. No third party has managed to build any serious political infrastructure at the local level and expand it regionally or nationally. That's why there are so many frivolous third party candidates for president; they're desperate to get a percentage of votes that will generate some federal funding to sustain organizational growth, and running for President is one of the few ways to get sufficient attention for that nationally.
  - timeon 2y ago
    Yes that is normal thing to do in pluralist democracies. Unfortunately not an option in two-party system.
  - saturn8601 2y ago
    The third party in the US is an amalgamation of the leftover scraps of losers that couldn't make it in the other parties. Because that's exactly what the Greens and to a lesser extent Libertarians are. To be fair it is wonderful that Howie Hawkins has managed to get the Greens on the ballot in 36 or so states. Its crazy that you can't even vote for this party in all states. But the vote count is horrendous. The best this country has ever done in recent memory was Ralph Nader and he was a someone famous that could move the needle....he still only got 2.74% of the vote.

code_for_monkey 2y ago

the dems could have won easily if they ran a half way competent campaign

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

scarecrowbob 2y ago

Yeah, I think everyone knows this was preventable. The idea that "people failed the Dems" causes me a lot of anger at this point, because the folks who had the power to prevent this preferred to slip ever rightward in their platform instead of recognizing any number of highly popular non-conservative positions. People often say "elections have consequences" but they are rarely saying "the democrats need to take this as an objective lesson about how badly they failed to represent their constituencies". Instead Democratic party apologists go into fantasies about Bernie Bros and Russian Interference, while they materially fail to do literally anything useful about the very real current issues. The Democrats need to understand that the election was so close that they could have won if they hadn't worked against themselves at the party level at every turn- if they had a primary of any kind they might have won. I absolutely don't agree that "voting blue" would have fixed this- I think this is the consequence of "voting blue" in 2020 and giving the DNC the idea that they can literally run a piece of toast and win against trump.

ceejayoz 2y ago
I tend to agree. I think the early energy of the Harris campaign was in part because the highly paid centrist consultants hadn't gotten their hooks in yet; there was a notable shift in tone as "these people are fucking weird" disappeared and "we've got Cheney endorsing us!" replaced it. I get, to some extent, why they're gun shy on this; centrism feels like it should be compelling with a crazy person on the other end... but I think the party needs to run an AOC style firebrand soon. Time to at least attempt being a bit leftist for once.
- almosthere 2y ago
  I mean if you're going to be for "leftism" it might need to be redefined because the reason your side lost (the side I used to be on) is that it went fucking nuts.
- roughly 2y ago
  The next person to suggest the Dems need to swing right needs to be thrown in a volcano, or at least outed as an obvious fifth columnist. Harris ran so far to the right she was campaigning with Liz Cheney on being tough on immigration, and she lost the election to a geriatric felon autocrat with no coherent plans because Democratic turnout was down. There’s no credible argument for that style of campaign anymore, and anyone suggesting otherwise is either dangerously incompetent or dangerously disingenuous.

latentcall 2y ago

I am actively balking at this. The Democrats did this to the country by having zero likable or relatable candidates and alienating the actual left of this country. Tim Walz was likable and relatable to middle America but he wasn’t running for president. The DNC has acted so undemocratic it is flabbergasting. We need a different party comprised of working class Americans who want to take care of the working class and not corporate interests. Reject culture war nonsense and frame this for what it is, a class war. If the response to Luigi wasn’t telling enough, I don’t know. The sentiment is there. Just need to fan the flames.

saturn8601 2y ago
Sounds great, how do you propose we do this? I'd like to hear your thoughts as the Sanders people have probably already tried it in the last eight years. You haven't seen the Democratic party perform at their best until you have seen them block and destroy an outsider that threatens them. Ask Sanders, ask anyone in the Squad. Hell there is even an excellent documentary on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCSo2hZRcXk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCSo2hZRcXk