Trump Is ‘Weird,’ Vance Is ‘Creepy.’ Finally, the Democrats Start Name-Calling
Trump Is ‘Weird,’ Vance Is ‘Creepy.’ Finally, the Democrats Start Name-Calling
The insults are delightfully petty and supremely satisfying.
Snowflakes. Groomers. Cucks.
For years the MAGA movement has approached politics the way a bully would approach a schoolyard, sparring with labels so nasty, they seemed expressly chosen to appeal to the kind of people who stuffed nerds in lockers in sixth grade. And for years Democrats, abiding by the mantra to go high, not low, have responded by trying to be the adults in the room: defending themselves with facts, with context, with earnest explanations that nobody remembers (if they defend themselves at all).
The problem is that taking the high road only works if politics is a sport played mainly by people who act like grown-ups, which it is not. And also: Facts and context don’t make for particularly sticky messaging.
Enter: Weird.
Over the past two weeks, as “Brat” and coconut memes have taken over the internet and Kamala Harris inches closer to Donald Trump in the polls, the Democrats have finally gone low, deploying a bit of verbal jujitsu so delightfully petty it might just work.
You're viewing a single thread.
Yes, nearly a decade into "Orange Man Bad" as their sole policy platform, the DNC is just now engaging in name-calling like the GOP 🙄 The paper of record!
It is, in fact, bad to sell classified documents that you stash in your bathroom and jeopardize the safety of all Americans. It is, in fact, bad to rape people. It is, in fact, bad to ignore scientists during a global pandemic. It is, in fact, bad to raise taxes on the working class while cutting taxes for billionaires. It is, in fact, bad to be racist. It is, in fact, bad to pay illegal hush money bribes to protect a campaign. It is, in fact, bad to say that democracy will end after you gain power.
I could do this all day.
Wow, you are smart. Guess everyone who was going to vote for Trump isn't now that you said he was bad!
Would you say that any of the things I listed are good? Or are you just going to not address facts and reality?
Turning a critique of an NYT article as being lazy and dumb (which it 100% is) into yet another instance of a neolib screaming "ORANGE MAN BAD AND THE DNC CANNOT FAIL ONLY BE FAILED!" on the internet isn't helping your cause, no matter how bad he is. There are millions of voters who would maybe show up if promised something, who simply aren't going to turn out to vote against Trump for being a rapist. That's just the reality.
I asked a direct question and you refuse to answer it. Since you can clearly read, I am forced to assume that you know all of those things are bad but admitting it hurts your feelings so you instead rely on avoidance behavior instead of confronting reality.
Edit: I also didn’t say any of the things you claimed I did. You are just lying at this point. It’s pathetic.
God, you blue MAGAs and your ad-hominems... You people really make Lemmy a VERY unpleasant place.
Which of the things I listed is good?
Do you just not understand that you look crazy to everyone and it's deeply off-putting, to the point where I'm certain a non-0 number of Lemmy users will refuse to vote dem just to not be associated with you people because you're overtly just as crazy as the original flavor MAGAs?
Yep it sure is crazy to dislike rapists.
What looks crazy and disingenuous to me is how you can't answer simple, direct questions. It makes it look strongly like you're arguing in bad faith.
You know what I find even crazier and more disingenuous? This user has scrubbed almost their entire history up to about 6 hours ago. Deleted a year's worth of posts and comments, most of which are downvoted. Isn't that just a little suspicious? I don't think this guy was ever here to participate in good faith, and is trying to hide their past. Good thing Boost keeps records of deleted comments and posts.
Removed, civility.
I've always found this "criticism" pretty funny.
I get the point of it is to be absurdly reductive, and to insinuate a reflexive, unthinking mindset where it doesn't matter what Trump does; the response will always be, "Orange Man Bad". Use of the "orange man bad" criticism ends up being more of an indictment of those who wield it though than it is of his critics. It's not like there's a failure to elaborate the specifics of each of his misdeeds. The information is out there and widely available to anyone who cares to take a look. That being the case, when specifics are given and Trump supporters or other malcontents dismiss it as "orange man bad" they are really displaying that they don't care to see why the complaint exists. It's a tactic of ignoring a legitimate problem, and hand waving it away under the pretense that there's nothing behind it. It's lazy and/or willful ignorance.
Beyond that, I don't think I've ever seen a Trump critic unironically use that phrase. If you'd like to see it though, here you go. Ultimately, this "criticism" fails to take into account that yeah, actually "orange man bad". Like, that's the legitimate reality of the situation. Trump is awful and he provides near endless examples of that. The guy is genuinely, unambiguously bad.
I'd like to welcome you out of your coma. Neolibs have no policy objectives that differ from the republicans on non-social issues (and no actual policy on social issues) so they've been harping on Trump being bad for a decade while getting into a position where they can't beat him in an election without a pandemic, which is presumably not their desired outcome, but maybe the strategy is working and this was the plan all along.
Neolibs have no policy objectives that differ from the republicans on non-social issues
That's just blatantly untrue. I don't see any Dem calling for disbanding the Department of Education. Stances on environmental protection are also starkly different between the two parties. Voting rights protections, abortion rights, access to medical treatment for transgendered people, funding of and access to Medicaid and food programs... how many more do you want?
Being against republican policy plans is not actually a prescriptive policy plan and won't turn out voters who aren't already 100% with you already. Democrats always lose on Hillary/Kerry "I promise you nothing but defeat for the republicans" platforms without a Clinton/Obama charisma dynamo as an incumbent, and not to downplay Harris' charisma, but she had to drop out before her home state in 2020 to avoid embarrassing under-performance and isn't really an incumbent.
The phrase "hold your nose and vote for _______________" exists entirely because voters turn out for candidates who they aren't 100% with.
You'd agree that the 2020 primary is quite a bit different from the current scenario we're looking at, yeah? As the Brits say, chalk and cheese.
As far as prescriptive policy, yeah, I'd love to see more, and wish it were more politically viable. That's the point where we need to start talking about extended strategy, which the US citizenry needs to get a better grasp on if we're going to claw our way forward. In the mean time harm reduction is a valid mindset.
It's not just politically viable for the democrats to be more proactive, it's smart politics. The right wing of the DNC has convinced everyone that to run on a non-GOP platform is politically nonviable. This is a lie, but it persists, and has fundamentally turned the DNC into a conservative party. They're conserving post-Great Recession America against the GOP's Fallout-style future 50's, but it's still fundamentally a conservative position ill-suited to the age demographics that trend DNC in terms of votes.
I largely agree with this. That's different than saying that the two parties as they currently exist are mirror images of one another though.
As far as the content of your post, that's where the need for extended strategy comes in. Until enough progressives/leftists work their way into the structure of the Democratic party on a state and federal level what you're describing is unlikely to change. Bemoan the two party duopoly as much as you like, but it's a reality. The way to change it is to infiltrate it and fundamentally alter the mechanisms that perpetuate it. It's not going to work to just hope for one progressive/leftist at the top of the ticket, and complaining that the person at the top isn't progressive/leftist enough can frankly be met with, "well, yeah, not much of a surprise there." The Tea Party is the template. They completely turned their party to shit (well, more so anyway), but successfully infiltrated the party apparatus to reflect their political preferences. If the left does something similar we can actually make 3rd parties viable and no longer be beholden to the Democratic party, but that's most probably a decade+ long project if we're being honest about it. It's unfortunate that the left is as fractious as it is; it only makes something like this more difficult.
I'm undecided as to whether you're a troll or just an unfiltered idiot. I am sure that there's not a third possibility though.
Troll. They have a year-long posting history they deleted to try and hide their bad-faith bullshit. They're just here to be an asshole.
I love how the people who claim to want the dems to win the most do the most to turn off voters online. It's truly remarkable.
If winning an election requires dumbing things down for the idiots to the point that nuance and substance disappears then maybe America is a failed experiment. Either way, you're obviously not participating in good faith here.
I do a lot of complaining about the Democrats and their offputting tactics, but I'm having a hard time believing you're actually engaging with any of this in good faith and simply bothered by the unfriendly responses.
These complaints just seem like repeating slogans rather than engaging with the actual failings of the Democratic party because the idea that they have no policy beside "Orange Man Bad" is just obviously untrue. Plenty of real criticisms, but that one's just nonsense. Add to that that the "Orange Man Bad" refrain originated with and is primarily in use by conservatives and this whole thread just doesn't pass the sniff test.
Obama v Hillary 2008 was over whether we do universal healthcare or card check to massively increase union membership. Name ANY serious non-Berniecrat dem who's run on anything anywhere near that scale in terms of moving progress forward since then.
And here is the predictable moving of the goalposts. Now the bar isn't that Democrats have no economic policy, it's that the primary policies weren't grand enough. Except in the primary that elected Joe Biden the major topics of discussion were just as grand and the super moderate who won still greatly increased anti-trust enforcement and canceled student debt. The most salient difference being the Democrats had a weak super majority in 2009 and the slimmest possible majority in 2021.
But anyway. Why do you use 4chan alt-right slogans as the core of your complaint, fellow leftist?
The paranoid accusations from the blue MAGA set are so insane. You sound like a crazy person. Everyone is a secret Russian bot or secret republican troll.
Let's point that conspiratorial thinking in a more constructive direction. Ever wondered why there's always a Lieberman/Manchin? It's almost as if the party structurally figured out ways to not deliver on its promises before landing on just not making any, while enabling the GOP to structurally take over the court, rendering electoral politics moot for at least a generation... Maybe the secret republicans are coming from INSIDE party leadership, not the internet...
It's a simple question dude. Why do you use those terms? You chose them. I didn't put them in your mouth. They're specific words from a years-old /pol / the_donald meme. Because you sound like a channer cosplaying rather than anyone actually immersed in the critiques of the Democratic party by the skeptical left. Plenty of true believers around. They make better arguments and use their own memes.