And that was always known to have been a counter-productive protest. There's nothing ironic about this. They were told. They didn't care.
It was unambiguously clear that no matter how bad you felt Obama/Biden/Harris were on Israel, Trump was/would be worse.
If every single human life is worth saving (and it is), it's indisputable that Trump is worse for Gaza than Harris would have been.
It was the ultimate Trolley Problem, and a bunch of progressives acted like pulling the switch on move the trolley is NEVER acceptable regardless of how many lives it saves...
The Dems being willing to lose elections rather than meet voter expectations, says more about them than it does any particular voting or non voting group.
Have you considered that if they lose an election without that minority, then they still lose the election.
Like a political partys job is to get votes. An electorates job is to withhold votes to punish poor performance. The entity not doing their job here is the party.
The political party's job is to get votes. Which includes keeping the votes they already have. Giving things to one wing of the party can cost votes to the other wing.
The party is aware of the trade-offs. It goes ahead with its best estimation of what will win. Sometimes they can do everything right and still lose. One such scenario is when people would rather have the greater of two evils rather than be responsible for the lesser.
That was (potentially) a reasonable argument before the election, but the election happened and we know the results.
"We can't adopt [potentially winning strategy] because it might harm [definitely non-winning strategy]" is not a reasonable position. You don't have to adopt any specific alternative plan, but clinging to a non-working plan clearly isn't the right answer.
Sure and its possible thats what happened. But looking at their behaviour, its more like they thought they could use Trump to force everyone to fall in behind them regardless of policy.
The only way Democrats would have lost votes is if the "Vote Blue No Matter Who" folk weren't really prepared to vote blue, no matter who. Democrats didn't lose their base, they lost their left; theoretically, there's no leftist policy they could take on that would lose them their base, because it's their base.
The trolley problem is an oversimplification. What we have is actually a repeated trolley problem, where picking the least of two evils gives the “less evil” party a near infinite amount of leverage over you to demand your loyalty regardless of whether they give in to any of your requests. The “less evil” party is in effect holding the people tied to the tracks hostage in your trolley problem. Because “less evil” is still evil, society decays no matter which way you flip the switch which leads to a population prone to fascism. The neoliberals are to blame more than anyone else for the situation we’re in today. They love to deflect but they are complicit in everything going wrong right now.
> where picking the least of two evils gives the “less evil” party a near infinite amount of leverage over you to demand your loyalty regardless of whether they give in to any of your requests.
The less evil party commands no loyalty at all, you vote for it only so long as there are no better options. If we're presupposing that there will never be any other option but the greater evil, then the lesser evil very much should be voted for consistently. Why can't the other side be the one that needs to reform to better appeal to the voters interests? What is to stop the lesser evil from becoming more evil, catering to voters who actually show up?
If people voted for a third party, that would be one thing. Sure the odds of winning the election are slim, but a third party candidate needs only 5% of the vote for the party to get federal campaign funds, to say nothing of the increased legitimacy in upcoming elections. It's happened in my lifetime, it can happen again. A strong showing by a third party forces the major parties to adjust to avoid splitting the vote. Jill Stein of the Green Party was openly opposed to Israel's actions in Gaza, they could have voted for her. And while there they could have voted for down ballot candidates so one party doesn't get control of all branches of government. But they didn't; third parties had their worst election since 2012. Of the 6 million democrat votes lost from 2020 to 2024, 400,000 were picked up by the green party. You can't simultaneously accept that the two party system is the be all end all and that you don't have an obligation to vote for the better of the two parties. It's understandable that people unenthusiastic with the current political situation just want to disengage, but don't act like it's a noble act of protest. Staying home isn't playing the long game, it's just throwing away your vote.
> The neoliberals are to blame more than anyone else for the situation we’re in today. They love to deflect but they are complicit in everything going wrong right now.
That they could have done better doesn't reduce at all the blame of those who specifically worked towards creating the current situation, and those who saw what was happening and chose to do nothing.
Biden literally started the genocide and Harris vowed to continue his policies, so no they are not "better". All they had to do is not support Israel and they would have won the election.
Yup. What's happening is horrible, but that doesn't mean there are better options. History has a very clear lesson: When Israel is harsh fewer Israelis die. When Israel is nice more Israelis die. The lesson has been repeated many times. Multiple times Israel has permitted the world to cram appeasement down it's throat, every time has made it worse for Israel.
Want peace over there, make peace not bring problems for Israel. But so long as Iran keeps fanning the fires of war I see no way to accomplish that.
It was unambiguously clear that no matter how bad you felt Obama/Biden/Harris were on Israel, Trump was/would be worse.
If every single human life is worth saving (and it is), it's indisputable that Trump is worse for Gaza than Harris would have been.
It was the ultimate Trolley Problem, and a bunch of progressives acted like pulling the switch on move the trolley is NEVER acceptable regardless of how many lives it saves...