True Story

It really isn't leftists' fault, though. Trump easily won the popular vote and flipped georgia, pennsylvania, and wisconsin from their dem vote in 2020. Low voter turnout/voter suppression are the real culprits - along with dems failing to do almost any of the things that could've changed this outcome. Leftist memes did not lose dems the election. Voter apathy and the sheer popularity of fascism did.
- Leftist memes did not lose dems the election. Voter apathy and the sheer popularity of fascism did.
  I'm not necessarily attributing blame here, but I'm pretty sure that OP is suggesting that leftist memes helped lead to this apathy. Say what you will, Trump voters were excited for their candidate... somehow, despite the list of reasons not to being far too long to be listed here. But many on the left either were just lukewarm on her, just considered her the lesser of two evils, or were protest voting third party or abstaining for one reason or another, mostly over Palestine. And there were memes galore to make clear to everyone what the general mood was. It doesn't exactly inspire enthusiasm to those that need that a lot of enthusiasm to even bother (those people are frustrating, btw). I don't know how much it actually contributed to or propogated the apathy versus how much it just reflected the apathy already there, but a case could be made either way.
  
  They didn't lead to the apathy - they pointed out the existing apathy would cost Dems the election. It's like saying the person who said you need to wear a seatbelt caused the wreck.
  You're exactly right about people being excited for Trump and lukewarm on Harris, but that's entirely on the Democrats for picking the platform and strategy that lost to Trump in 2016.
  Harris had a notable and surprising lead when they announced Biden was out - then they changed nothing else. People didn't just not like the candidate, they didn't like the policies. They only changed the candidate and thought Trump was a big enough cudgel to bully people into voting even though that demonstrably doesn't work.
  
  Kamala isn’t on the left. The democrats aren’t on the left. This is a false dichotomy. They’re all capitalists. You can’t be on the left and be a capitalist, so leftists had many more disagreements with Kamala than Palestine.
  Now, if you want to look at a great analysis of fascism and the false dichotomy in American politics, read Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti.
  
  It is on the candidate to inspire people. Yeah, the left was lukewarm to a candidate that was trying her best to court Republicans. How else could you expect that to play out?
- Why do you think the turnout was so low? Millions of idiots were pressuring people to withhold their vote over Palestine in a colossal self-fuck. That is if you assume these people spreading that are really that stupid. Some were, but I think a large percentage were paid trolls. And their campaigning worked. Russia owns the United States now
  
  Yeah there are only so many times Biden can go "hey isreal, you'd better stop that genocide or else!" While doing nothing whatsoever and even giving them the weapons to continue the genocide before people go "well they aren't going to do a damn thing about this"
  
  It can't possibly be because that's a real concern. They had to be paid actors. You sound like Infowars after a school shooting.
  
  I see, so in order to save "democracy" people should have supported Genocide.
  Honeslty maybe the Democrats should have seen this coming to themselves for supporting, and I will repeat it once more in case you don't understand, GENOCIDE.
  Imagine voting for 100% Hitler because another guy could be 150% Hitler.
  
  Another contributor to low turnout was massive voter suppression. It'd be interesting to see that quantified. Hundreds of thousands of voters were being purged in each of several states. The single-issue Gaza vote was lost in the noise of those gross examples of electoral manipulation.
  
  Only 10% of the electorate even cared about Gaza. You're giving the American people entirely too much credit.
- I distinctly remember hearing about unusually high voter turnout.
  
  It just wasn't blue voters.
- If Harris had campaigned on the issues she would have had so many Republican women jump ship. Just look at how many of them voted for abortion in Missouri.
- There's a million reasons people have given me for voting Trump, none of them rational. But the classic tropes of fear and disgust won out again. I'm old enough to remember the 2004 election, then it was gay people. Now it's trans people and dark-skinned migrants. I really didn't think those old tropes would work this time, but it just keeps working. Americans will just keep falling for it, apparently.
  While it's depressing that we're reminded of the power of dumb at hateful people yet again, we should remember that nothing actually changed in that regard this election. We're just discovering what's always been there beneath the surface. I don't think the malaise we're feeling now is so much about what Trump will do - sure scores of people will die from bad policy, but that's nothing new. Rather, we're upset about what this reveals about ourselves. But we shouldn't be upset about the act of revelation, because it tells us what we need to fix.
  
  To continue this thought, you might be interested to know how neuroscience tells us the brain works: In short, the unconscious mind decides and acts, and the conscious mind makes up stories about why. Quite often, the story is just wrong, or at least misguided. Those voters have a real reason that they don't understand or won't admit to themselves, and a million reasons that they give instead to explain it.
  Yes, we need to drop the misconception that people rationally decide about much of anything, and learn about their real reasons.
- It wasn't 'voter apathy' it was a misplaced sense of voter moral superiority. It's the thing leftist rhetoric has been weak to for a very long time. That love of withholding support except for perfection. The idea that compromise or chosing a lesser evil from two bad options dirties you. It doesn't matter what you lost if you personally took "the high ground".
  This cutting of our noses to spite our face was exploited all to shit this election. They lulled people by appealing to the same zeal of righteousness that they know divides us fundamentally knowing that when push comes to shove people will turn up their noses on principle of not being personally catered to and forget that their ability to help at all is contingent on the freedoms that one party was explicitly putting on the chopping block.
  It will be a while before people can admit that they were duped and there's a lot of fault to go around, particularly in those funded astroturf campaigns designed to bait the hook... The right have been watching us for the past decade they knew how to divide us and it is on US that so many of us fell for it.
  
  You really think the 15 million people who voted for Biden but not Kamala was "misplaced sense of moral superiority"? Why?
  
  Jesse, what the fuck are you talking about
  
  Dude, wow okay. let me inform you how voting works.
  a person (or group) has ideas, and says 'hey friends, support me so I can implement these ideas'
  people then look at your ideas and say 'oh that sounds grand!' or 'No thanks, pass'
  the person who gets the most people to say 'oh that sounds grand!' wins.
  now here is the thing. harris 'grand idea' was a fucking genocide, and no support for labor. this isn't about fucking moral superiority. its about a complete fucking lack of morals by harris across the board.
  If you walk into a fucking room of people and tell them to 'join you for some genocide' dear fucking god do I hope they tell you to fuck right off. Now unfortunately 30% of the population is down for genocide. another 30% are willing to go along with it if you threaten them enough (or won't impact them personally). and a final 30% is like 'lulz newp'. Why the democrats thought it would be good policy to try to out compete genocidal fucks at their own game for votes is beyond me.
- Do you remember the number on this “incumbent advantage”? The establishment didn’t just switch out Biden on a whim. Biden literally fucked his chances at winning at the debate. You are barking up the wrong tree
  
  Encumbant advantage? In this economic climate, it's exactly the opposite. People who are feeling increasingly fed up with a world in which they cannot make ends meet vote against the status quo.
  4 years of Trump got people to vote against Trump. 4 years of Biden got people to vote against his VP.
  Biden himself would lost even harder than Kamala did.
  
  Hey, I know you don't know me, but I want you to know that depriving us of what you can bring will only make it worse. I've found that I can keep myself alive by living for the people around me. Right now what's keeping me going is touching base with everyone, seeing how they're doing, asking them if they've made any plans, and telling them about my plans to move forward. Direct action just got a whole lot harder and more dangerous, but giving up now only makes the problem worse. One foot in front of the other, until you get the rhythm, Then follow it. I believe in you.
  
  Please don't kill yourself. We need you for the revolution. Doesn't matter who you are, what your skills are. If you can hold a gun or make soup, we need you.

Hey, chasing republican votes didn't work this time, but I'm sure it will next time. Definitely don't try appealing to the left.
- Do you think we'll get primaries back? And not the fake ones we're use to.
  
  No way, the rabble might ask for someone that doesn't allow Nancy Pelosi to openly do insider trading.
- As long as progressives (and correspondingly, everybody) gets nothing, we're good 👍👍🤘✊

Look at Michigan. Nobody was going to ignore Gaza into a victory. The memes and posts were warnings, not divisions. When it became clear she wanted to take a path close to Biden most of us even laid off because it was clear it was more harmful to keep going.
But it turns out that asking the relatives of genocide victims to vote for someone who won't commit to stopping it is not a good campaign strategy. The divide in Michigan is well within the 140,000 strong registered voters in the Arab community.
Take your fucking L like an adult.
- Ok, but like at the end of the day, Michigan didn't fucking matter... it was over the minute Trump won PA . Besides that, look at the demographics and how they voted. Young people, those most likely to care about the Gazan genocide, split the vote by gender for Trump and Kamala. Specifically young white and Latino men overwhelmingly voted for Trump. Is that supposed to indicate that caring about the genocide in Gaza, something Trump has repeatedly talked about amping up, is something that the vast majority of the voting populace cared about? No. Kamala got 14 million less votes than Biden did in 2020, and I'm tired of this same gaza, black woman, etc spiel. It can't be chalked up to these things alone. The democrats ran an appointed candidate that never would have won a primary on her own, and got the consequences of that.
  The blame is not on Biden, nor is it on Harris for not caring about Gaza. The blame lies squarely on democratic party for not figuring out a plan sooner, and the 14 million voters that appeared 4 years ago when it was trendy, but not now when the threat is most grim. Not to mention the fact that not voting for Kamala when her opponent has not only stated that he will allow Israel to continue, but will actually ramp up their genocide is just fucking stupidity, no two ways about it. Just as we tell Trump voters not to vote with their feelings and to listen to rational arguments, we must tell left-leaning voters the same.
  
  Gaza was also a big issue for Gen Z, and blaming the voters for not liking you has never ever made them vote for you.
- L like
  Pronounced "yike" as in Spanish. This is called eliding.
- asking the relatives of genocide victims to vote for someone
  There are 160,000 Palestinian-Americans. Most of them originate in the West Bank (especially Ramallah) and Jerusalem. Almost none of them are in Michigan. Michigan's Arab-Americans are mostly Lebanese-descended.
  People with family ties to Gaza were a vanishingly small percentage of the electorate. They're vastly outnumbered by the people who were suckered by the "Dems = Genocide" concern-trolling.
  
  And yet that community in Michigan told us they have lost entire branches of their families. I'm going to believe the actual people in the community.

Damn I didn't know 50 leftist shitposters on the internet had so much power that they can flip an election. Maybe they should try to do what they ask if they want to win
- Are you talking about Lemmy alone? These people are EVERYWHERE over the Internet, TikTok especially. Also the reach for a post is a lot larger than the likes it gets, like upwards of 10x.

I am so sick about the Gaza rhetoric and that’s why we lost. Bitch less then 10% of voters give a shit about Gaza. 40% of voters have major concerns about the economy. The next highest concern was immigration at 20%. Foreign policy was a measly 8% of concern for voters.
This goes for people blaming Jill Stein voters. Kamala got wrecked in this election. Even if you add all 3rd party votes to her she still loses.
- lol. 10% (or was it 4% a few hours ago from you dunces...) that literally cost harris 25 electoral points. oops! sure she could have done more on labor. but she wouldn't even fucking shift to stop being pro-genocide. I doubt she gave a shit about your eggs costing a few cents more. or if you were LGBT+. so she wasnt going to get those votes either.

This is simply stupid. Harris didn't lose because of a few memes on her Gaza stance or third party. She lost because she's a relic of the same neoliberal system that has gotten us where we are. Not so say that Trump isn't. He is a neoliberal as well, and a fascist at that too. It's just that trumpists are more willing to go to the polls because of the cult-like party they're in. Democrats need to be pushed out the door with ideas other than ideas stolen from the right. Kamala Harris fumbled her entire campaign and it was obvious from the get go. I honestly do not understand how people thought she'll win. Hell, she even embraced the fucking Cheneys.

I honestly think it hurts worse now than it would have if he won in 2020, since we were seemingly so close to getting away from this dirtbag.
- Well silver lining I guess is that he can't be elected again unless he gets it changed somehow
  
  Here's hoping
  
  You know, knock on wood. At least he's fucking ancient
- I now wish he'd won in 2020. Maybe it would have finally been the thing that stopped D from tacking to the right. Plus, we'd be a month away from being done with him now. We'd be a month away from starting to rebuild from 8 years of his shit. (well ok, more like two months)
  Instead, factoring in the supreme court, the house and senate, and figuring all the shit he dismantles will take more than just 4 years to put back together, I figure I'll be dead of old age (as will anyone over 50) by the time any of the progressive goals that seemed like they could one day be obtainable at the end of 2020 actually have any chance of becoming obtainable again.
  And that's on top of the untold horrors that await the queer community, people of color, folks with special needs, etc etc during the next four years, and I'm now not 100% sure we'll get another election at all.

Maybe you could say this if the election was close. But the Gaza-Isreal voters are a drop in the bucket.
- Yep, non-voters were a much bigger problem for Harris
  
  You mean "fuck you, you're voting for us, here's Dick Cheney!" wasn't the winning message for everyone that it was for centrists?

In other words, the people that refused to cater to the cultic cognitive dissonance are to blame and Democrats will learn nothing.

Blaming indiviguals for not wanting to vote for a pro-genicide candidate works so well. Totally helped us win 2016 and 2024.
Here's the real issue. The Dems would rather be moderate Republicans than actual left-wing candidates. They spent all their time trying to appeal to modern White wingers and modern right-wing are still vote for people like Trump instead.
- I like how the Republicans are now simply labeled Trump. It's so fitting!
- We should not pander to fascists and their enablers so we are free to say fuck all non voters. You will not have another election anyways so non voters should be cut out of anyones life the same way MAGA is.
- Oh, look how smart you are, you figured out the REAL issue! Conveniently, it had nothing to do with people like you doing everything possible to spread voter apathy, what a coinky-dink!
  Look how smart you are, you didn't vote for the "PrO-gEnoCiDe candidate", and now we have the actual Pro-Genocide PARTY in charge of the Presidency, Congress and the Supreme Court.
  What's first on your agenda? Email Trump, ask him to stop the genocide, LOL?? Oh hey, maybe the Trump administration will allow Palestinians to seek asylum here in the US right?!?! We all know how friendly they are to immigrants!
  You're so effin' smart, man! We are all in awe of your genius political acumen.
  
  You should be angry at the millions of people who voted for trump instead. There's a lot more of them than left wingers with morals.

And disabled folks, and veterans, and naturalized citizens...

Trump enablers in leftist spaces are just agent provocateurs. There's always some infiltrators
- Genocide-enabling establishment cultist can't figure out why they lost, but sure everyone who tried to get them to see the end result if they didn't change their tune are the the agent provocateurs.
  
  Two days ago i said she could have lied and won and someone got upset.
  For them supporting genocide and ignoring people protest and not even speaking to them is better than lying to secure vote to stop what they call a “threat to democracy”
  I also pointed out that she has different ads in Michigan and PA, and someone refused to watch the video because it was on Fox news.
  These people lives in the cloud, everyone is a russian bot or troll. They never blame the Democrats that insisted on Biden even after the debate, where they could have allowed Harris to plan better long time ago.
  My best is when I see Bill Clinton supporting harries in a campaign about Women Abortion Right. Like at least be a shame of someone associated with Epstein and caught lying in office.
  
  The one enabling genocide now will be Turbo Genocide Donny and it will be 10 times worse.
  Or did you think it would stop when Trump won? Are you this naive?

Here Are 34 Polls That Show A Ceasefire & Weapons Embargo Help Kamala Win

Fuck all non voters. They will be regarded the same as Trump voters in the history books and are the same kind of filth as those.

While I have had criticism of Harris, I've never insulated that she(or Biden) wasn't the much, much better option. I have been called a Burniebro on a discord by someone who doesn't take criticisms very well.

help

If the left is divisible by memes its no wonder they lost to the right.
- Imagine thinking that billions of dollars in campaign funds were overturned by a picture posted on Lemmy.
  The Left is a group so insignificant that we don't need to cater to their positions at all, but so massive that they're completely responsible any time we lose.

Thanks electing Trump, Uncommitteds. Enjoy watching Gaza burn and Ukraine turn into Russia.
- No, thank you! we couldn't have done it without your absolutely disgusting support for a genocide. expecting other people to fight for you when you won't fight for them. my god the arrogance.
  
  "Joined 25 days ago"
  Ok Russian shill account.
- Maybe you can trade places with a Palestinian getting genocided right now and see how smug you are then.
  Zionists are something else.
  
  It'll be a genocide soon enough.
  
  Thank you for finally providing a sane take, here on Lemmy.

- Dunno what's wrong with your shit, but it looks fine from here.
  
  True, looks fine on Thunder. A Voyager bug?
  Edit: now it happens in Thunder too? What's going on?

This is not a shitpost.
- I declare this to be a shitpost. The bar isn't exactly high.

Hey, at least the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is about to be finally resolved in our lifetime.

Honest question and I'm being 100% sincere. Did he genocide them last time he was elected? Can you send me more info on what he's planning to do this election?
Or is it mostly just enabling his voters to hate lgtb people?
- Trump supports the genicide of Gaza
  https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/10/25/trump-netanyahu-support-gaza-lebanon/
  
  Yes I'm aware of that. OP made it sound like they were more concerned about LGBT genocide

Do you see enough votes from any independent to get Kamala elected? Stop blaming the voters. She didn't campaign.
- when "the candidate who wants start a fresh, new genocide" wins the popular vote, it is the perfect time to blame the voters
  
  And I don't suppose it could be because people are not happy with joblessness and inflation?
- A lack of accountability has been a recurring theme here. The orange man will take no accountability for attempting an insurrection, or for the hatred he encourages. Voters will not take accountability for electing a fascist.
  
  Nor will the legal system take responsibility for not doing anything about Trump before he pardoned himself.
  Nor will the Democrats take any responsibility when Trump steamrolls over their constituents.
  
  Democrats will take no responsibility for why they lost.
  
  American institutions have failed in many ways, and the Biden administration has given up every tine the institutions fail. Now we have this.
- MFW I forget that people can choose not to vote at all
  
  Did she campaign? Did she run a good campaign? Did she go into the black barber shops, like Trump did? Did she go into the McDonald's, like Trump did? Did she go out to meet the people, like Trump did?
  She tried scaring people away from Trump and it didn't work. They want an economy that's doing better than this. They want jobs. They want their life to be better.
  That's how you win elections. You tell people you know how to make their lives better. You don't tell them the other guy is going to make their life worse. That doesn't win an election. It never has.
  https://lemmy.world/comment/13289142
  It gets downvotes, but it's still not wrong.
  
  It is called democracy when you can't force people to do what you want.
- 2 million registered PA voters did not vote.
  
  How does that compare to past elections?