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The Democrats blew it by being unresponsive to their voters' material demands and instead doubling down on hollow NGO speak. They preferred to run issue-free "v

The Democrats blew it by being unresponsive to their voters' material demands and instead doubling down on hollow NGO speak. They preferred to run issue-free "vibes" campaigns. The same business-industrial class captures them as the Republicans. Neither party is genuinely going to organize around class or material needs. The real threat to America or Americans isn't a single man. It's the superstructure that enabled him. In other words: "Wer hat uns verraten? The Democratic Party."

taylodl 2y ago
But they weren't unresponsive to the actual needs of their voters. Biden was one of the most successful presidents in US history, but in this Republican-led post-factual world facts don't matter. The blame for that rests solely on US citizens. They've allowed themselves to be lulled into the fantasy that the party will continue on and on regardless of reality. Well, the party is over.
- ok123456 2y ago
  > But they weren't unresponsive to the actual needs of their voters. Medicare for all? A cease-fire in Gaza and an end to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians?
  - jmye 2y ago
    Gaza was not a need of the vast majority of their voters, whatever a handful of college kids who are utterly incapable of understanding basic international politics think of themselves. Neither is Bernie’s idiotic version of Medicare for all, in spite of it being a fun bumper sticker. Y’all have gotta give up the TikTok bullshit and read some books.
    - netsharc 2y ago
      With margins so thin, supporting the genocide might've lost Harris some votes. But there was probably some internal calculation of whether being pro or against the killing of the children (amongst others) was a net positive or negative for their number of votes. Yeah, politics, where you kill your conscience for the chance of winning.
      - jmye 2y ago
        It’s clear you don’t understand anything about the conflict or what might happen if the US withdrew support for Israel. What’s weird is refusing to bother learning, and instead plugging your ears so you can smarmily opine about being “pro killing children”. Again, this is social media political thinking. No nuance or even a vague hand wave at intellectual honesty.
        ok123456 2y ago
        There's no nuance with a genocide.
    - ok123456 2y ago
      > Y’all have gotta give up the TikTok bullshit and read some books. I have a book for you that predates the "TikTok bullshit." It's called "The Fateful Triangle" by Noam Chomsky. He portrays internal Isreali thought and political currents in the early '80s, which are more or less unchanged 40+ years later. In particular, the dichotomy between the "doves" of the left who want an apartheid state with a pacified Palestinian population to live in townships whose purpose is to provide cheap labor, and the "hawks" who outright called for the Lebensraum policies that we're seeing today in the illegally occupied territories of the, as Menachem Begin called them, "beasts walking on two legs," remains unchanged. As for Medicare for All, I don't know of anyone who has had a positive experience using the American for-profit, multi-payer healthcare system. What is the alternative bumper sticker for keeping the status quo? "I <3 Getting my claims denied" or maybe "I DON'T want to shoot the CEO"?
      - jmye 2y ago
        > I don't know of anyone who has had a positive experience using the American for-profit, multi-payer healthcare system You’re aware, of course, that it isn’t a binary choice, right? That Medicare for All isn’t the sole and only other possibility, or that thinking it’s an idiotic idea does not, in fact, suggest that one thinks the status quo is perfect? What, specifically, do you know about healthcare, Medicare reimbursements, or how doctors work in this country? What, specifically, do you know about how the current system functions? I’m curious what apparently extensive knowledge underpins these really strongly held opinions. > Noam Chomsky Who may have done a brilliant job of discussing Israeli political thought, and whose writing might’ve led you to understand what would happen if the US withdrew support and Israel was pushed into an existential conflict. Let someone know when you get to that part.
- kcplate 2y ago
  > Biden was one of the most successful presidents in US history Biden? If that man was actually the one leading the country over the last 2+ years, I’ll eat your hat. All that is coming out now from multiple sources in the administration seem to indicate he hasn’t been capable of making many decisions for quite a while now.
  - pmags 2y ago
    Can you give a few of the specific "multiple sources" you mention? I see posters on HN trot this out, but I'm yet to see any evidence of this. Can you point to a couple of reliable news sources reporting on this so I can read more for myself?
    - kcplate 2y ago
      There are two books that literally have dropped in the last 2 weeks and the authors have been doing a lot of media about them. One is called “Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House” another is called “Uncharted: How Trump beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History”. Both of these books quote anecdotes from Biden admin insiders and dem politicians about the challenges they saw and experienced. DNC fundraiser Lindi Li has been all over the podcasts and news (back in November a lot) talking about the challenges she saw. I’m not sure what you consider “reliable news sources” but I have seen this topic and these authors, and Lindi Li on network, cable, and new media news sources across the spectrum.
- the_snooze 2y ago
  I was a Biden voter, but he was a weak and deeply disappointing president who exercised awful judgment on multiple occasions: running for re-election at his advanced age, not sacking Lloyd Austin for either the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal or going on cancer leave without telling anyone, not taking the lead on ending the COVID emergency (Colorado's Jared Polis was ahead of the White House on that), having so little control over White House interns that they released open letters against official Biden Israel policy, failing to take inflation seriously, etc. Republicans are awful, but Democrats don't seem to want to do any better than "at least we're not them." It shouldn't be any surprise that Trump has (had?) real appeal over feckless national Democrats.
- sn9 2y ago
  Voters don't respond to long-term policy wins or economic data. They respond to the perception of their material conditions, and the rise in inflation of the last few years has resulted in regime change all over the world. Liberals are only just now beginning to realize this, but it remains to be seen if they'll learn at a scale that matters.
  - monkeyfun 2y ago
    And of course, one of the other dirty aspects to this is that if you're willing to emotionally jerk off and manipulate your base to the extreme, that basic perception of material conditions can distort away from reality. Not completely so, but it's part of what makes populism so powerful, and unless they can find ways to embrace elements of populism they're going to find nobody's receptive to their messages.
    - Whoppertime 2y ago
      It doesn't matter how much you manipulate people if they cannot afford to get married buy a home and raise kids they will know.
sorcerer-mar 2y ago
It's always interesting when you see a new meme emerging from the rightwing information wormhole into the open internet. This week's must be "NGO" used as some type of slur. Anyway, the economy was rocking under Biden, we had the largest investments in manufacturing in decades (the advanced kind, not mud production), record low unemployment, stonks going up, etc. Inflation is pretty much the only issue that mattered, which was a global phenomenon that America navigated better than anyone else, and there's almost nothing to say about it. Well, you can lie and say that you'll reduce prices on day one, despite having no mechanism to do so, which I suppose is the real takeaway: Dems should blatantly lie more.
- ok123456 2y ago
  The terms NGO-speak or PMC didn't come from some "rightwing information wormhole." These are very real ideas and concepts that average people internally and instinctively revile: they are no longer people but "human resources."
  - sorcerer-mar 2y ago
    Oooookay ?
    - ok123456 2y ago
      Ok.
  - watwut 2y ago
    They totally did. Sorry but no one but rightwing information wormhole seen NGO as something nefarious in principle. It is just laundering far right bullshit again.
    - ok123456 2y ago
      So anyone critical of the Gates Foundation for distorting public health priorities through his NGO slush-funds is participating in "far right bullshit" again? This is demagoguery.
watwut 2y ago
It has zero to do with material demands. Those lost the elections. What won them was conservatives stroking fears about trans, women and such. Talking about material demands is just repeating past mistakes. Actual economical or other results have nothing to do with anything. It was not about that. Democrats thinking them being objectively better for economy might do something is what looses the elections.
- ok123456 2y ago
  The only reason those evergreen moral panics worked is the radio silence from the Biden and Harris campaigns on what concrete things they would do differently if given the chance at another term. Instead, voters were told they were better off than ever, and there was some astroturfed panic about "Project 2025."
  - Tadpole9181 2y ago
    > Astroturfed Panic Oh, please, if this isn't you just saying the quite part out loud. They are enacting Project 2025. Significant portions are already done, for God's sake! Don't pretend like it's some Boogeyman made up thing!
    - monkeyfun 2y ago
      Yeah, I can agree with who you're replying to on the fact that the lack of much perceived economic substance is certainly what made more of the "anti-woke" rhetoric work out so strongly, but Project 2025 is so ridiculous real and being enacted that it's comical to even suggest it was baseless fearmongering. I mean literally day one a slurry of orders practically taken straight from it were made, and it's clearly been the playbook they're operating off of. It's not astroturfed, some of us spotted what's going on and tried to draw attention!
    - Whoppertime 2y ago
      Project 2025 is not what he is implementing. It had nothing to do with his campaign. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda_47 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda_47 He's implementing Agenda 47. That's his campaign manifesto. Project 2025 is something that nobody believes in. In the same way Abortion as an issue is divided between Pro-Lifers and Pro-Choicers. Nobody is carrying banners saying they are Anti-Life, or Anti-Choice.
xnx 2y ago
> The Democrats blew it by being unresponsive to their voters' material demands The margin is so close that one can name any of a dozen reasons why they blew it and be totally correct. The Democrats blew it by no cravenly violating norms like refusing to seat a supreme court justice because it was too close to an election.

taylodl 2y ago

But they weren't unresponsive to the actual needs of their voters. Biden was one of the most successful presidents in US history, but in this Republican-led post-factual world facts don't matter. The blame for that rests solely on US citizens. They've allowed themselves to be lulled into the fantasy that the party will continue on and on regardless of reality. Well, the party is over.

ok123456 2y ago
> But they weren't unresponsive to the actual needs of their voters. Medicare for all? A cease-fire in Gaza and an end to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians?
- jmye 2y ago
  Gaza was not a need of the vast majority of their voters, whatever a handful of college kids who are utterly incapable of understanding basic international politics think of themselves. Neither is Bernie’s idiotic version of Medicare for all, in spite of it being a fun bumper sticker. Y’all have gotta give up the TikTok bullshit and read some books.
  - netsharc 2y ago
    With margins so thin, supporting the genocide might've lost Harris some votes. But there was probably some internal calculation of whether being pro or against the killing of the children (amongst others) was a net positive or negative for their number of votes. Yeah, politics, where you kill your conscience for the chance of winning.
    - jmye 2y ago
      It’s clear you don’t understand anything about the conflict or what might happen if the US withdrew support for Israel. What’s weird is refusing to bother learning, and instead plugging your ears so you can smarmily opine about being “pro killing children”. Again, this is social media political thinking. No nuance or even a vague hand wave at intellectual honesty.
      - ok123456 2y ago
        There's no nuance with a genocide.
  - ok123456 2y ago
    > Y’all have gotta give up the TikTok bullshit and read some books. I have a book for you that predates the "TikTok bullshit." It's called "The Fateful Triangle" by Noam Chomsky. He portrays internal Isreali thought and political currents in the early '80s, which are more or less unchanged 40+ years later. In particular, the dichotomy between the "doves" of the left who want an apartheid state with a pacified Palestinian population to live in townships whose purpose is to provide cheap labor, and the "hawks" who outright called for the Lebensraum policies that we're seeing today in the illegally occupied territories of the, as Menachem Begin called them, "beasts walking on two legs," remains unchanged. As for Medicare for All, I don't know of anyone who has had a positive experience using the American for-profit, multi-payer healthcare system. What is the alternative bumper sticker for keeping the status quo? "I <3 Getting my claims denied" or maybe "I DON'T want to shoot the CEO"?
    - jmye 2y ago
      > I don't know of anyone who has had a positive experience using the American for-profit, multi-payer healthcare system You’re aware, of course, that it isn’t a binary choice, right? That Medicare for All isn’t the sole and only other possibility, or that thinking it’s an idiotic idea does not, in fact, suggest that one thinks the status quo is perfect? What, specifically, do you know about healthcare, Medicare reimbursements, or how doctors work in this country? What, specifically, do you know about how the current system functions? I’m curious what apparently extensive knowledge underpins these really strongly held opinions. > Noam Chomsky Who may have done a brilliant job of discussing Israeli political thought, and whose writing might’ve led you to understand what would happen if the US withdrew support and Israel was pushed into an existential conflict. Let someone know when you get to that part.
kcplate 2y ago
> Biden was one of the most successful presidents in US history Biden? If that man was actually the one leading the country over the last 2+ years, I’ll eat your hat. All that is coming out now from multiple sources in the administration seem to indicate he hasn’t been capable of making many decisions for quite a while now.
- pmags 2y ago
  Can you give a few of the specific "multiple sources" you mention? I see posters on HN trot this out, but I'm yet to see any evidence of this. Can you point to a couple of reliable news sources reporting on this so I can read more for myself?
  - kcplate 2y ago
    There are two books that literally have dropped in the last 2 weeks and the authors have been doing a lot of media about them. One is called “Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House” another is called “Uncharted: How Trump beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History”. Both of these books quote anecdotes from Biden admin insiders and dem politicians about the challenges they saw and experienced. DNC fundraiser Lindi Li has been all over the podcasts and news (back in November a lot) talking about the challenges she saw. I’m not sure what you consider “reliable news sources” but I have seen this topic and these authors, and Lindi Li on network, cable, and new media news sources across the spectrum.
the_snooze 2y ago
I was a Biden voter, but he was a weak and deeply disappointing president who exercised awful judgment on multiple occasions: running for re-election at his advanced age, not sacking Lloyd Austin for either the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal or going on cancer leave without telling anyone, not taking the lead on ending the COVID emergency (Colorado's Jared Polis was ahead of the White House on that), having so little control over White House interns that they released open letters against official Biden Israel policy, failing to take inflation seriously, etc. Republicans are awful, but Democrats don't seem to want to do any better than "at least we're not them." It shouldn't be any surprise that Trump has (had?) real appeal over feckless national Democrats.
sn9 2y ago
Voters don't respond to long-term policy wins or economic data. They respond to the perception of their material conditions, and the rise in inflation of the last few years has resulted in regime change all over the world. Liberals are only just now beginning to realize this, but it remains to be seen if they'll learn at a scale that matters.
- monkeyfun 2y ago
  And of course, one of the other dirty aspects to this is that if you're willing to emotionally jerk off and manipulate your base to the extreme, that basic perception of material conditions can distort away from reality. Not completely so, but it's part of what makes populism so powerful, and unless they can find ways to embrace elements of populism they're going to find nobody's receptive to their messages.
  - Whoppertime 2y ago
    It doesn't matter how much you manipulate people if they cannot afford to get married buy a home and raise kids they will know.

sorcerer-mar 2y ago

It's always interesting when you see a new meme emerging from the rightwing information wormhole into the open internet. This week's must be "NGO" used as some type of slur. Anyway, the economy was rocking under Biden, we had the largest investments in manufacturing in decades (the advanced kind, not mud production), record low unemployment, stonks going up, etc. Inflation is pretty much the only issue that mattered, which was a global phenomenon that America navigated better than anyone else, and there's almost nothing to say about it. Well, you can lie and say that you'll reduce prices on day one, despite having no mechanism to do so, which I suppose is the real takeaway: Dems should blatantly lie more.

ok123456 2y ago
The terms NGO-speak or PMC didn't come from some "rightwing information wormhole." These are very real ideas and concepts that average people internally and instinctively revile: they are no longer people but "human resources."
- sorcerer-mar 2y ago
  Oooookay ?
  - ok123456 2y ago
    Ok.
- watwut 2y ago
  They totally did. Sorry but no one but rightwing information wormhole seen NGO as something nefarious in principle. It is just laundering far right bullshit again.
  - ok123456 2y ago
    So anyone critical of the Gates Foundation for distorting public health priorities through his NGO slush-funds is participating in "far right bullshit" again? This is demagoguery.

watwut 2y ago

It has zero to do with material demands. Those lost the elections. What won them was conservatives stroking fears about trans, women and such. Talking about material demands is just repeating past mistakes. Actual economical or other results have nothing to do with anything. It was not about that. Democrats thinking them being objectively better for economy might do something is what looses the elections.

ok123456 2y ago
The only reason those evergreen moral panics worked is the radio silence from the Biden and Harris campaigns on what concrete things they would do differently if given the chance at another term. Instead, voters were told they were better off than ever, and there was some astroturfed panic about "Project 2025."
- Tadpole9181 2y ago
  > Astroturfed Panic Oh, please, if this isn't you just saying the quite part out loud. They are enacting Project 2025. Significant portions are already done, for God's sake! Don't pretend like it's some Boogeyman made up thing!
  - monkeyfun 2y ago
    Yeah, I can agree with who you're replying to on the fact that the lack of much perceived economic substance is certainly what made more of the "anti-woke" rhetoric work out so strongly, but Project 2025 is so ridiculous real and being enacted that it's comical to even suggest it was baseless fearmongering. I mean literally day one a slurry of orders practically taken straight from it were made, and it's clearly been the playbook they're operating off of. It's not astroturfed, some of us spotted what's going on and tried to draw attention!
  - Whoppertime 2y ago
    Project 2025 is not what he is implementing. It had nothing to do with his campaign. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda_47 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda_47 He's implementing Agenda 47. That's his campaign manifesto. Project 2025 is something that nobody believes in. In the same way Abortion as an issue is divided between Pro-Lifers and Pro-Choicers. Nobody is carrying banners saying they are Anti-Life, or Anti-Choice.

xnx 2y ago

> The Democrats blew it by being unresponsive to their voters' material demands The margin is so close that one can name any of a dozen reasons why they blew it and be totally correct. The Democrats blew it by no cravenly violating norms like refusing to seat a supreme court justice because it was too close to an election.