#this is how electoral politics should work

[hyperlexichypatia]

I think this is true, but what makes it particularly frustrating is that politics -- not just electoral politics, but literally any form of political action ever -- will always be either harm reduction or harm increase. No politician will ever "save us," nor should you want them to. If you support a politician you think will do anything other than, at best, mitigate harm, you will be, at best, disappointed, or at worst, fall under the sway of a charismatic dictator.

One of the most frustrating things about this presidential election was the way so many people -- and, I cannot emphasize this enough, these are not people who would typically be considered "low-information voters," these are informed people who follow news and politics to an above-average degree -- blamed Biden and/or Harris for "not doing" things that were in no way within their scope of authority. I wanted to absolutely scream every time some smug anti-voter thought they had a real gotcha with "If Biden/Harris are for abortion rights, why did we lose Roe under Biden?" or "If Harris says that if elected she'll restore Roe, why doesn't Biden restore it now?" That's not how this works! That's not how any of this works! The president doesn't control or "overrule" supreme court rulings, but the president does appoint supreme court justices and other federal judges in the hope of more favorable rulings in the future!

Like. Especially in presidential elections, the degree to which even informed, engaged Americans view the president as Big Daddy In Charge who will Fix Things and Punish My Enemies and is Personally Responsible for Everything That Happens just... makes any realistic political movements so difficult.

"But Trump said he would -- " he was lying! "But Biden said and then he didn't -- " he was also lying! Congratulations, you've discovered Level Zero of Political Awareness, "Politicians Lie." You use your Critical Thinking Skills to deduce what's a lie and what isn't by, among other things, your awareness of what is actually in the politician's scope of authority.

It's just... I know there's a very accurate and valid pushback from the youthlib movement against using the word "childish" as an insult, and I do agree with that, but in this particular case, I will defend its accuracy -- this worldview is literally childish. It is developmentally appropriate for a young child to have an un-nuanced view of authority figures and assume that there's A Person In Charge who is responsible for fixing/solving all things, which is why toddlers will sometimes do things like ask their parents to turn the rain off. There is no reason for this worldview to persist into voting-age adults. Yet for some reason it does.

I don’t know if I’m yet fully here, but something to think about.

[pinkieroy]

Head in my hands, I don't wanna have opinions about an election that is not even in my country, but this website makes it hard

[hammerbacks]

reading a book about john major’s first 18 months in office and despite being just shy of 50 pages into this, i’ve been smacked full force with both admiration for him and sadness that we don’t make prime ministers like him anymore

[exopelagic]

yknow i thought the whole ‘personal connection’ thing to politicians was kinda bullshit but my dad just told me the only reason he’s voting labour is bc keir starmer said he wasn’t working after 6pm on fridays to spend time with his kids and he respects that

[hyperlexichypatia]

Yeah, that is definitely a more comforting and hopeful thing to believe. It's also one of the many, many, many contexts in which I, as a liberal socialist, think the dichotomy between "liberals" and "leftists" makes no goddamn sense, but that's a separate issue. Maybe. Perhaps. But sure. It is more comforting and hopeful to believe that a political movement that has all the appearances of being motivated by malice, hierarchy, and domination is actually just motivated by material conditions.

And there is undoubtedly significant truth to this. Polls absolutely show that prices and the economy were a major factor for Trump voters; they weren't looking at any policy positions other than "Biden is president and prices are high, when Trump was president prices were lower, ergo Trump." It's highly likely that if economic conditions were better under Biden, or if Biden-Harris had appeared to have a better strategy for addressing them, Harris might have won the election. That's true! I'm not disputing that!

But we're still talking about a few percentage points -- yes, a few percentage points that could've swung an election in a two-party, winner-take-all electoral system, but still, a few percentage points, not a cultural movement.

The ideological fascism represented by Trump&Co is a cultural movement that has been thriving in the U.S. for decades and is paralleled by similar right-wing, authoritarian, nationalist, and fascist movements around the world, in Europe and India and China and Japan and many, many other countries. It's happening in countries with universal healthcare, and countries without. It's happening in countries with higher GDPs and countries with lower GDPs. It is not connected solely to economic conditions.

Also, right-wing voting correlates positively with income. The people most victimized by economic problems are not making up the bulk of the shift to the right, no matter how many hand-wringing thinkpieces about "the white working class left behind by liberal elitists" get written (you'd think The Hillbilly Elegy Guy becoming Trump's VP would have permanently discredited that theory, but thinkpiece writers have never been able to read the room).

The relationship between the housing crisis and right-wing political movements is sometimes framed as though the phenomenon is "People unable to afford housing vote right-wing on the assumption that right-wing policies will improve their economic prospects," and while there are some instances of that, people who can't afford housing are not Trump's base. Trump's base are housed people who are angry that they see unhoused people panhandling outside their Nice Neighborhood and are angry that Those Damned Liberals won't round them up and put them in debtor's prisons or just shoot them.

And. Like. Again, as a liberal socialist, I think the government should, actually, be guaranteeing everyone housing and healthcare and food and education! Those are policies I support because I think they're the right thing to do anyway! So I would very much like to believe that these policies, that I already believed in for other reasons, would also have the side benefit of making people less bigoted and authoritarian and fascistic, and, I don't know, maybe it would help a little, but for how long?

Because there will always be ups and downs in material conditions, at least until we achieve full post-scarcity. I mean. I absolutely want to abolish capitalism and economic inequality, and want the effects of ups and downs in material conditions to be borne equally across the population rather than the hoarding of wealth we have now, but even in a socialist utopia, there will be shortages. There will be crises. There will be natural disasters. There will be outbreaks at the egg farms (yes even if there are regulations and proper procedures, sometimes these things just happen!), and there will be times when there are no eggs on the shelf. If humanity is going to get hold of our climate/energy crisis before we make the planet entirely unlivable, there will be gas shortages. There will be rationing. There will be reductions in energy and material resources used for leisure travel, and that is the absolute ideal, best-case scenario. And if people's response to being told "Sorry, there's no eggs today" or "Sorry, there's no gas today," or, heaven forfend but completely necessarily, "Sorry, only a limited number of people can own personal vehicles, you'll have to take the bus, oh, and the person sitting next to you on the bus might be queer or Black or Jewish or schizophrenic or another demographic you hate" is to become fascists, then humanity will flat-out not survive. As long as people's culturally ingrained default response to adversity is "Blame a despised minority group, identify as better and more deserving than someone else, divide people into in-group and out-group," fascist ideologies will continue to be a recurring social problem.

And. I mean. That doesn't mean I know the solution! I don't! Scolding does not work! There is some evidence that exposure and personal interactions with actual people one is bigoted against reduces bigotry, as does representation of counter-stereotypical examples, but these are far from foolproof! There was integration in Germany before the Holocaust. There was integration in the Balkans before the Bosnian genocide. "Integration" alone is not sufficient to prevent bigotry nor even to stop it from becoming genocidal. But neither are better material conditions or economic systems, not when Belgium kills disabled children and China is actively committing a genocide (that half the "leftists" on this site are active deniers of) and so is Turkey and I could absolutely keep going.

But not knowing the solution to the problem of authoritarian, bigoted, hierarchical ideology doesn't mean we can write that off as a problem!

I actually think the real solution has to be fundamentally changing education away from hierarchy and competition, changing the system of children beginning in toddlerhood having to "earn" a position of being "better" than other children, but I'm also aware that this is unlikely to happen unless guaranteed material living standards are established for adults, because parents will never support non-competitive education as long as they rationally believe that education must prepare their children to compete for an ever-shrinking number of possibilities for a decent quality of life, because material conditions aren't actually separate from egalitarian liberal values and framing them in opposition is false in the first place.

(I also think a more practical relevance of material conditions to combating authoritarian ideology is not in improving the material conditions of authoritarians to make them less authoritarian, but improving the material conditions of the victims of authoritarianism so that they can better free themselves from their authoritarian abusers. Less "If that domestic abuser had a guaranteed income, he wouldn't abuse his partner" and more "If his partner had a guaranteed income, she could afford to leave her abuser." But for some reason, that isn't acknowledged as much.)

So no, I don't "have the answers" for combating authoritarian, bigoted, hierarchical, fascistic cultural attitudes, but I certainly think acknowledging that they are the problem is better than assuming that bigoted authoritarianism is Just What Happens When High Grocery Prices or Just What Happens When Feminists Are Mean or whatever else. People choose, on purpose, to subscribe to bigoted, hierarchical ideologies. People choose, on purpose, to build a worldview and identity around being intrinsically superior to some other kinds of people. It's not inevitable, and I don't buy that it's unchangeable.

Source

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Joan McCarter at Daily Kos:

With all this attention on the dangerous, radical plan, more and more people are trying to find out what it’s all about. Navigator Research, a consortium of progressive polling firms, has the goods on how we should talk about it with friends and family, and what Democrats need to be saying about it on the stump as the election heats up. On Wednesday, Navigator released the third and final results from its latest survey about Project 2025. Conducted June 20-24, the survey found that the most salient and message about Project 2025 is that it “is an unprecedented, extreme Republican plan that will fundamentally alter the American government making Trump even more dangerous in a second term by granting him presidential powers like no president before him has ever had.” 

According to Navigator, the most effective messages focused on the impact rather than on political consequences. The message that worked best for Democrats and independents was that Project 2025 would "roll back and eliminate Americans’ constitutionally protected rights and freedoms," while the message that worked best for non-MAGA Republicans—i.e., Republican voters who did not self-identify as supporting the MAGA movement—was that it would "hurt hard-working American families and seniors." “Nearly 9 in 10 Democrats (87%), 7 in 10 independents (70%), and about half of non-MAGA Republicans (48%) believed it would have a negative impact on them and their families after exposure to Project 2025’s policies and messaging,” Navigator found.  There’s plenty in the authoritarian plan to worry Americans. It seeks to end no-fault divorce and  restrict access to birth control—even condoms! It demands cuts to Social Security—raising the retirement age from 67 to 70—and wants to privatize Medicare. Then there are the proposals to curtail food assistance, eliminate Head Start, restrict help to disabled veterans, and roll back overtime pay requirements for hourly workers.

A new poll from Navigator Research conducted between June 20th and 24th reveals that many parts of Project 2025 are very unpopular with the electorate.

[ms-demeanor]

hi, hopefully this isnt a stupid question -- this is only my second election i'm voting in, and i'm a little confused about results. is it actually confirmed that trump has won, or is it just almost certain based on the counted votes? bc i know that provisional ballots (like mine) probably arent immediately counted, and there was that thing about votes needing to be verified because of signatures, plus to my knowledge the electoral college doesnt vote til december? i'm probably just grasping at an infinitesimal chance of things not being shit, but also i do actually want to understand and google is not helping :( if you can't explain no worries, you just seem to be knowledgable & willing to answer questions haha

This is absolutely not a stupid question.

So everything is currently pointing at what is most likely, not at what is 100% certain, but it's like 99% certain. There are still votes being counted, but in the states where the election has been called it has been called either because enough of the ballots have been counted that the remaining count wouldn't change the results, or that the area is historically so strongly in favor of one party that it's exceptionally unlikely that they'd flip the other way (for example, they're still counting california's ballots but you're more likely to get struck by lightning five times today than california is to flip red in this election). The places that have not yet been called do not have enough electoral votes for Harris to win the election.

The electoral college is exceedingly unlikely to flip their votes against the state/district vote; "Faithless electors" is the term for members of the electoral college who would vote against the vote they are committed to for their region. It was something discussed in both the 2016 election and the 2020 election and flipping the electoral college without winning the election was the motivation behind J6. As shitty and bullshit as I think the electoral college is, if you're going to have one and you're going to have the rule of law, you can't hope for faithless electors because what you're hoping for at that point is that the people representing you are acting directly against the choice of the voters.

I want you to listen to me. I have been voting in presidential elections since 2004. Presidential elections always suck. Who the president is does matter, and does impact your life, but you genuinely do not have a ton of influence over that so you can't let it throw you into despair and inaction, because we should be active and political and protesting the wrongs of the world even if your favored political party wins. Vote in local elections, work with your local community, and if your local community sucks too, work with online communities to both give and get support.

Whenever something like this happens, people pass around the Mr. Rogers quote about looking to the helpers. I like that quote. I think it's good, I think it's hopeful, I think it helps! But I also think that sometimes it's even more effective if you look for how to help. Who are you the most scared for after this election? Who are you worried about in your community or among your friends? What can you do that might make their life easier? What can you do to protect people like that in your community? What don't you know that might make you better prepared to help them in the future?

One thing that I think is a fantastic way to prepare to help is to either begin or continue learning a language that you don't know. I am working hard on my Spanish because I live in California and there are a ton of Spanish speakers here who I might be able to help. Is it directly aiding anyone right at this second that I'm practicing conjugation? No. But it might help someone who is being harassed by a cop, or who is unhoused and needs help, or who is being abused by an employer at some point in the future, and I can get myself ready to help. Learn how to use naloxone and pick up up an inhaler; you might not need it now, but it'll make you ready to help someone who does need it. Order free covid tests every chance you get, even if you don't need them, because then you can give them out to people who do need them. Plan B has a multi-year shelf life. Pick some up so that you've got some on hand if someone needs it.

Maybe there's nothing you can do right at this exact second (though if you are able to donate to gender affirmation fundraisers, border kindness, abortion funds, bail funds, etc., you can absolutely do that), but you can get ready to help someone who will need you someday.

[read-marx-and-lenin]

Was it antifascist when the USSR only ever allowed less than 10% of the population to vote for the one candidate the dictatorship put forward for each role?

Why did you deactivate your last account? Were you upset that you looked so foolish? You don't look any less foolish creating multiple alternate accounts to send anon hate with. I don't even have anon asks turned off.

The Soviet Union had universal suffrage. Every voting-age adult was allowed to participate in the elections, besides felons and those who were incapable of voting due to mental disability. All ballots were secret (at least, after 1936. Oftentimes elections prior were done by show of hands, but this became problematic.)

If you are referring to the election of the Presidium or the appointment of the Premier by the elected representatives of the Supreme Soviet, I would consider that more democratic than the election of the President of the United States, since not only was the Presidium a council of multiple people in and of itself instead of one singular person at the head of the government, but the election of the Presidium was undertaken by representatives who were directly elected by the people, as opposed to the electors of the Electoral College in the United States who are appointed by party officials.

If you are referring to the election of the General Secretary of the Communist Party by Communist party members, then that position was not a governmental one. While the General Secretary did indeed have significant political influence due to their role as leader of the vanguard party, they were not a dictator and the position did not confer any state powers.

Not only were the Supreme Soviet and the Presidium composed of many different people who collectively decided upon state actions, many powers and duties were constitutionally delegated to regional councils and soviets. The federal government never held supreme power.

As for the idea that there was only "one candidate" for office during elections, the so-called "single-slate ticket" decried by the West, it betrays a fundamental misunderstanding about how communist politics works. Competitive tickets were not impossible, although party discipline prevented them from occurring at any high level. Rather, the single-slate ticket arose because prior to the printing of any ballots, there was a period of discussion to determine who would be the candidate in the first place. So it was not a case of people being told by the party "here is your candidate, now you must vote for them". The people and the party worked together to find candidates who had public support in the first place. In addition, not only could voters simply vote "no" and reject a candidate (and any candidate who did not receive a majority of "yes" votes would be rejected,) but all elected officials were subject to recall at any time if they were found to be deficient in their responsibilities by the electorate. Candidates were not forced on the Soviet people by faceless party bureaucrats.

If you want to know more, I recommend checking out "Soviet Democracy" by Pat Sloan (I should note that that particular work forms most of my knowledge on Soviet democracy, so take all of that with a grain of salt for anything past 1937 when the book was written) and pretty much anything written by Anne Louise Strong, although I would recommend "In North Korea", in particular Chapter 3 which goes into detail on pre-war DPRK elections and includes a very enlightening passage on how the North Korean voters at the time viewed single-slate tickets. Suffice it to say, they did not at all feel disenfranchised.

I can understand why you would be misinformed as to how the Soviet government worked. But to decry the Soviet Union as undemocratic, let alone fascistic, is absurd.

[ceilidhtransing]

Baffled by the people who say things like “back when it was Biden v Trump, I was going to vote third party, since Biden had no chance of winning” - like, do you not kinda realise that huge numbers of people deciding to vote third party “because it's a given that Biden will lose” is partly why he (probably) would have lost?

Elections aren't pre-decided! The results depend on what you (and millions of other people) do! If your feeling is something like “ugh the Democrat is going to lose so I'll just stay home / vote third party”, that is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The Democrat isn't just “going to lose regardless” no matter what anyone does; you are actively creating, in your own tiny way, the conditions under which the Democrat loses.

We see the same thing here in the UK. “There's no way the Conservatives will ever lose this seat” so the left splits its vote eighteen ways and oops the Conservative candidate wins with like thirty-nine percent of the vote.

It feels like some people subconsciously think of an election as something that just Happens independent of them, and that their vote isn't something that creates the result, but rather something that indicates to what extent they agree with the result. And I get it; in an election with a nine-figure number of votes it must be hard to feel like your individual vote makes much of a difference, to see a tangible connection between your vote and the outcome. But seriously: election results don't just Happen as some kind of force of nature. They depend entirely on the votes people choose to cast. And if your thought is “well I'm just me”, there are millions of “just me”s in the electorate. In fact, the electorate is nothing but a whole load of “just me”s.

So much of politics relies not on convincing people of your ideas, but on convincing them that the candidate they prefer either Has It In The Bag, so they don't need to turn up and vote, or Has No Chance, so they either shouldn't bother voting or should throw away their vote on some third-party candidate who - simply by the way the system is set up mathematically - genuinely never stood a chance in hell of winning anyway. (This is not a “you should vote third party” post, because this post acknowledges the reality that the US presidency is going to go to one of only two people, regardless of how anyone wishes the system worked.)

“Why should I vote for candidate A? They're never going to beat candidate B anyway!” cry ten thousand progressive voters, meanwhile horrible conservative candidate B wins by a margin of nine thousand and something. Attitudes create outcomes. Votes create outcomes.

Nothing is decided yet. The result is not predetermined. Your vote is part of what makes the result - and the outcome is going to be either Harris or Trump. And I know it's a cliche, but truly the only poll that matters is the one on election day. Please don't fall victim to defeatist self-fulfilling prophecies that only serve to help create the outcome you never wanted in the first place.

[qqueenofhades]

Hello, qqueenofhades!

I just want to say, that ever since I discovered you in the week following Biden stepping down, you've actually made me not dread talking about politics. I look forward to your thoughts on what's going on, and I want to thank you for that.

I would love to know: What do you think of the apparent exhaustion from Republicans/MAGA about Trump? People leaving his rallies (and that's not even covering how few are even coming at all or his supposedly needing to pay people to come), and the slew of formers we see at the DNC openly talking about their change in sides. Do you have any ideas about what might be causing this shift? Was it Harris? Was it Jan. 6th? Was it one singular reason, or multiple at once?

Hope you're having a good day.

I think it's a lot of reasons. First, as I said earlier, the whole theme of the DNC is about reclaiming the USA FREEDOM message from the Republicans, who have had a monopoly on it for the past three decades at least and used it to justify even more antidemocratic fascist militant theocratic hard-right turns. The scenes of joyful people talking rousingly about hope, compassion, morning in America, and breaking out into regular USA! USA! chants appeals a lot to the average American, who doesn't want to hear constant violent and negative bile from the Orange Felonious Traitor, because that is literally the only thing he has to offer and it's getting openly more deranged and dangerous every day. The whole Tough Talking Populist Outsider shtick worked in 2016, when Trump didn't have four years of incompetent chaos as the actual president and was just a theoretical concept who a lot of people thought would "smarten up" and take it seriously if he actually won. Likewise, the backlash of white grievance against Obama and the complacency that Trump didn't actually stand a chance was able to be leveraged against the decades of smears that the GOP had already leveled on HRC. Of course, Trump lost the popular vote by 3 million-plus, but the Electoral College did what it's designed to do and he snuck in anyway. But it wasn't a rousing landslide or a thumping victory.

As such, a lot of Reagan Republicans are now turning to the Democrats as the actual pro-USA party, because Trump trash-talks America, calls it a shithole third-world country, bellows about WWIII and the Great Depression, cozies up to foreign dictators, etc etc. Reagan also pitched the sunny message of America as the shining moral hero of the world (he in fact used the Make America Great Again slogan that Trump repurposed), and that likewise resonated with people after the chaos and unrest of the 1970s. Now, we all know that I hate Reagan's ass and I hope he's burning in hell for so many reasons, but his message was effective because it gave people a soaring rhetorical vision to believe in (even while he was often stripping away their economic prosperity in particular behind the scenes, all together now, FUCK REAGAN). But the Republicans who joined the 1980s party are now seeing Republicanism become a tawdry cult centered on, as Geoff Duncan (GOP former Lt. Gov. of Georgia) put it yesterday, the worship of a felonious thug. Trump is wildly anti-America; he only uses it as a vehicle to get what he wants, because Donald Trump is all that Donald Trump cares about. Yes, there are still plenty of brainwashed cultists in numbers great enough to make this election far, far closer than it should ever be in any sane universe, but increasingly even his own cultists don't want to hear it anymore. They keep leaving before the event is over and he's drawing far smaller crowd sizes than in 2016, which as we know is pretty much all he cares about. He has a desperate need for attention and approval to feed his damaged narcissistic-sociopath dementia-riddled brain, and he's just not getting it, while the very real prospect looms that if he loses this election (and it looks more and more like he will) he will go to jail for the rest of his life. Terrifying.

That's why we have the unprecedented spectacle of lifelong Republicans and former Trump voters flocking to Harris in large numbers. We've had Republican speakers at the DNC every night, and they keep playing video montages of former Trump voters disavowing him or explaining that they won't vote for him. If you consider what propelled Trump in 2016 -- conservative white grievance against a black guy named Barack Obama -- the willingness to unhesitatingly embrace a black/mixed-race WOMAN named Kamala Harris is incredible. Many of them were already planning to vote for Biden before he dropped out, but it was no certain thing that they would move from being willing to vote for an establishment old white guy to also being willing to vote for a woman and a person of color. The fact that we've had so many high-profile affinity group Zoom events for Harris, including from truly unbelievable quarters (Republicans for Harris, Mormons for Harris, EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS for Harris), shows that there is a country-wide exhaustion with Trump's poisonous selfish grievance performances, where he's willing to do anything to anyone and turn the USA into a fascist dictatorship if it will exempt him, personally, from the consequences of his odious actions. That is not a message that any sane person can support, and more and more, they don't. As I have said before, that is why fascist movements always sow the seeds of their own destruction. They work for a while, but eventually they're boring, they're mean, they're exhausting, and they offer nothing for anyone but being angry all the time at everyone. Most humans don't like that, and eventually, they drift away.

I also think that part of the reason Kamala absolutely nailed it with Tim Walz as VP is because Walz is the literal anti-MAGA in every way. We have seen a lot of similar straight white military-vet football-coach-type Middle America older men drift into MAGA grievance politics because it offers a home for guys like them and feeds on fear of the future and fear of the other. They feel like they're being heard and understood, even if they aren't, and they vote Republican because they've grown up with Republicans being the pro-America party (however defined). But because Walz is a straight white married military-vet football-coach guy who actually models a joyful and compassionate masculinity, an openly emotional and supportive masculinity, who talks movingly about his love for his wife and children, who is a hunter and gun owner who nonetheless loves kids more than guns, who has taken his small-town rural-America values and become an effective and genuinely progressive politician focused on making ordinary people's lives better, he offers a total antidote to MAGAism. He shows that it is possible to be a traditionally manly American straight white guy who is not a gibbering conspiracy theory-addled shitbag dedicated to trampling on everyone else out of reactionary fear. He shows those guys that they can embrace the diverse future and not have to fear it, and he gives them a permission structure to vote for Democrats because it's the right thing to do AND feel that the Democrats are now the real pro-America party.

Basically, right now, Walz is the most popular member on either ticket, and he's crushing Vance into oblivion (there's something like a 27-point difference in their favorable/unfavorable spreads) because Vance is a horrible robotic hateful gremlin and Walz is an authentic and genuine person who a lot of traditionally Republican-affiliated men (and women!) can identify with. He's also the guy who came up with the devastating "weird" attack line that the GOP can do nothing with except splutter and whine, like playground bullies, that no YOU'RE THE WEIRD ONE. He models that it's actually normal to want your leaders to be compassionate human beings who want to use power to make your lives better, and not hateful fascist alt-righters dedicated to making you also hate everyone and be steeped in doom and gloom. That is why people responded so well to Obama in 2008 after the turmoil of the Bush Jr. years, and why this feels even more monumental than Obama. We won't know until the votes are counted, but this giant tsunami just rose out of nowhere when Harris took over, and it's speeding forward in a really incredible way. We've got to do the work and we've got to vote, but if we do, we could absolutely pulverize Trump and MAGA to smithereens in a way that means it wouldn't be able to come back for a good long while, and oh, what a glorious day that would be. So yes.

[esoanem]

Important takeaways from the US election that should actually bring you hope

Trump did not get more votes than in 2020

This election was lost because the Democrats lost votes the Republicans (and third parties) did not pick up

This makes it clear that there are election-winning numbers of people who do not feel catered to by either party

There are significant numbers of people further left than the Democrats, and of the Democrats actually decide to appeal to them (the people who previously voted Democrat but didn't this time) they can win again

The bad news is that I suspect the Democrats will continue to look only at exit polls and so consider those who didn't vote a lost cause, something that will inevitably lead to them moving right in a doomed attempt to "appeal to the center" (which has basically never worked as a tactic). I have some further analysis on this topic, and how people are misinterpreting exit poll data (in ways that align with the conclusions the DNC always draws after electoral losses) here

Politics does not start and end at the ballot box

You need to get involved now to try and force them to listen to the actual evidence and move left, not just because that is the moral thing to do, but because it is what will make them able to win an election (which is all the DNC actually cares about)

That means things like joining your local DSA chapter (for all I have issues with them), and actually participating in the internal party politics of the Democratic party

It also means showing up for local elections & primaries and vocally supporting leftwing candidates over establishment Democrats

[batboyblog]

The recent Chappell Roan thing is why I absolutely hate the lack of political literacy in this country. Big-name celebrities think they're really cooking when they say "well Kamala still supports blowing up Palestinian babies because she won't cut ties with Israel, so therefore I'm not voting for her and you shouldn't either! Both her and Trump suck so I'm not voting/voting third party!"

Like it or not, Israel is an ALLY of the United States. We CAN'T just cut ties with them unless it's a long drawn-out process, and even then it's probably NEVER going to happen. This is basic shit we learned in social studies, holy shit!

Trump would be so much fucking worse for everyone involved, including Palestine, and not voting or voting third party is pretty much just handing your vote over to Trump due to how voting WORKS in a two-party system dictated by the fucked up electoral college.

This was a long ramble and you've probably gotten similar asks the last few months like this, but fuck, I just have to get this off my chest, and the most recent event with her was like the straw that broke the camel's back. Celebs in general need to shut the fuck up about politics unless they are actually partaking in activism instead of this virtue-signaling bullshit.

Taking things one thing at a time.

I'll admit to having only seen Chappell Roan's final video on the subject, so idk what she said before that (outside of generally)

The two things that really stuck out to me and pissed me off about that live/video was she 1. accused Democrats (she said "the left" but was clearly in context talking about the Democrats) for "transphobic policy" (also genocidal, equally silly) and it was SUCH a groundless lie, such a baseless, stupid, uninformed, silly lie. It'd be like saying "yes the right is bad! but Kamala Harris says she wants to shoot a pony every day of her Presidency and I can't support that!" And to be a Queer artist who's whole thing is centering Queer art, particularly drag who's got a young maybe not very informed queer fan base who's made talking about trans rights your main political thing to just lie about the nature of the threat to trans rights and trans lives at this moment is fucking awful and downright criminal.

Listen right now Republicans are aggressively attacking Democrats on trans rights. Trump went after Harris at their debate for "trans surgeries for illegal aliens in prison!" Republicans are attacking Tim Walz as "tampon Tim" for the idea that he supports trans male students having access to tampons (and other crazy transphobic attacks on him) Republicans are centering transphobia as a main campaign issue, anyone who gives a fuck about trans people in this nation should know Trump and Creepy Vance in charge of the federal government? is the nightmare. You can't claim to care about trans people or be "centering" them and not be doing all you can to stop Republicans at the ballot box this November. And both siding it and saying bullshit that somehow it will be just as bad if Democrats win is not stopping Republicans no matter how you personally vote.

The Second thing in her video that really annoyed me was she said she was voting for Harris but then had a whole word salad about how everyone needed to make up their own minds about who would be best. Basically saying that while she was voting for Harris, a vote for Trump was a reasonable conclusion people could reach. Again if you truly care about the issues she says she cares about, no, you can't vote for Trump. And again to use your platform to push "both sides" is to throw the very people you claim are your brand under the bus in the worst way.

I don't like to throw people under the bus for their family, Tim Walz' brother is a MAGA lunatic for example, but Chappell Roan talked about Republican family that "loved her" and I can't help but wonder if she was thinking of her Republican State Rep uncle, Darin Chappell. Again people can't control family members and I'm not asking anyone to come out and attack their family in public. I'm just wondering if her views on Republicans and finding a middle ground and "they still love me" is colored by Uncle Darin and not understanding he might love her and be proud of her but he still walks into the Missouri state capital and votes for abortion bans and transphobia.

to move onto the meat of your ask which I think is less about Roan in particular and more generalized about a certain type of celebrity and GenZ very on-line types. On the whole Israel-Palestine thing, I think most of the people posting about it know very little or know a lot of misinformation, you every see people boldly posting "I don't need to know everything to know right from wrong!" you run into that a lot. And I'd say yes, you do need to know a lot to comment on a complex multi generational ethnic-political conflict with many state and non-state actors.

Last night JD Vance and Tim Walz had their debate and every time there was an issue, housing costs, medical costs, gun violence, inflation, Vance would move it around to how if we just deported all the immigrants the issue would be fixed, no more drugs no more gun violence, housing would be cheap, just get rid of the people I don't like.

And I see a lot of that with Israel, "Palestine is a climate issue!" "Queer as in Free Palestine!" etc where if we just get rid of Israel it'll all be fixed. Which of course connects to long standing antisemitic ideas about Jews running the world, people happily sub in the word "Israel" or "Zionist" and then repeat the same old racism thats followed the Jews around for 1,000 years.

So long and short I think most people talking about Palestine don't know enough to talk about it, but what's worse don't really care about Palestine at all

I'm reminded here of Trump's "Deal of the Century". Oh? you don't remember it? shocker, in January 2020 Trump released a "peace plan" drawn up with no Palestinians involved, where Israel would be allowed to annex everything in the West Bank it would want, the Jordan Vally cutting Palestine off from Jordan and totally encircling it with Israel. The West Bank would be Swiss cheesed up into little pockets connected by tunnels or overpasses but with Israeli territory running through it everywhere. The Palestinians said "no!" and then Netanyahu claimed that Trump had green lit Israel to annex the land it wanted even without Palestinian agreement to the plan and without giving the Palestinians anything. There was some confusion and thankfully that didn't happen. We may never know the fully story of what stopped it, but I do think Trump agreed to annexing much of the West Bank, but pulled back under pressure from Gulf Arab Oil states who later in 2020 made peace with Israel in the Abraham Accords in an effort to stop Netanyahu's annexation plans.

any ways to point out, 1. Palestine was on the edge of annexation the end of the dream of Palestinian statehood in any meaningful sense, and where were the protests? the encampments? etc? it never comes up, 4 years ago, and all the people who live and breath this stuff never mention it? 2. We have reason to believe Trump signed off on a far-right government of Israel annexing much of the West Bank, his "peace plan" abandoned the outlines that American Presidents since Bill Clinton set forward for getting a Palestinian state on 95+% of the West Bank in favor of "what does the Israeli right want?" and again no one is talking about it in the context of this election, we know what he'll do, because he's done it before.

but again its not really about the Palestinians, its not about building a Palestinian state, its "get rid of Israel" and then what? what happens to the 9 million people who live in Israel? and people don't have a realistic answer, because its a political fantasy that if they just do X everything will magically get better, even on totally unrelated issues.

[tanadrin]

Honestly, I *don't* want to mix things with proportional representation. I see proportional representation as an excellent way of increasing the importance of dealings between politicians and reducing the incentive effects of the voters. But in my ideal world I'll need to negotiate with people who do like proportional representation, and this system is a compromise I could get behind. Plus you can plug and play any three different electoral systems for different compromises.

First past the post is a bad, undemocratic electoral system. First past the post privileges large parties by making small ones unviable, and distorts the composition of parliaments by wasting votes. It can be gerrymandered in a way proportional representation cannot be. It produces highly unrepresentative outcomes. It is a bad electoral system! All good voting systems are to some degree inclined to more proportional results.

I've never heard the accusation that PR "increases the importance of dealings between politicians," but look. I don't know how else to put this. That is a stupid objection. Just absolutely boneheaded. You haven't thought about this at all, I reckon.

People hate on "politicians" as a generic class, but it's like hating on lawyers as a generic class. You need politicians. You want politicians. You want people whose specialized job it is to read legislation, fight about what should go in it, represent your interests, and come to balanced compromises about those interests. People percieve politics as messy, venal, and corrupt, and it can be all those things, but guess what? The alternative to career politicians is part-time citizens who don't know what the fuck they're doing, have no expertise in the legislative process, and therefore are at the mercy of lobbyists who can walk them like a dog because they're naive and inexperienced.

There's this especially (but not exclusively) American pathology that is a suspicion of government that works too well. This peculiar notion that if only we sabotage government a little bit it will keep tyranny in check and make politicians more honest... somehow. But filling government with random yahoos doesn't get you a noble collegium of Tocquevillian citizen-lawmakers, it gets you a pack of Marjorie Taylor Greens and Lauren Boberts. You know--morons. Americans will support all these ballot initiatives that fuck up government on purpose, like term-limiting legislators and keeping their salaries low so only rich people can afford to go into politics (and even then are only willing to do it as a stepping stone to other gigs), and vote for people who promise to make government work even worse by cutting the budget and lowering taxes, and then have the absolute gall to whine about how badly the government works. My fellow Americans, you did that on purpose.

(And there's this weird paradox where Americans all loathe Congress. Who keeps voting these creeps in? Well. You do. Congresscritters are generally pretty highly approved of by their own constituents. The stereotype of lazy, stupid, venal politicians always seems to apply to the other guys.)

And you will also note that since the abolition of things that used to facilitate deals between politicians in the U.S. congress--since the abolition of earmarks and chummy socials between congressmen and the post--generally, since the post-Gingrich upheaval in the House--it has gotten harder to pass even necessary, basic legislation, because it is harder to make the basic compromises necessary to keep government functioning. Having three separate legislatures that each can claim a different sort of democratic mandate isn't a recipe for good legislation, it's a recipe for paralysis and constitutional crisis.

[navree]

You keep saying refusing to vote for Biden on moral grounds because of Palestine is ineffective because Trump would be worse, but that really isn't the point. Largely (with the exception of a few extremists and a contingency of people who wouldn't have voted anyways) the philosophy of a movement that has people withhold their vote is to force a significant policy change that wouldn't have changed otherwise. Its a form of protest. I understand from your perspective, election-focused and pragmatic, it is a threat to whoever is running, but if Biden had wanted the votes being withheld he would have capitulated.

Not that this isn't a moot point since he's out, but whatever.

See, this is intensely fucking dumb.

"force a significant policy change" it would not. One, because Biden is the president of the United States, and Israel is not one of those states. Short of sending the CIA to, idk, assassinate Netanyahu in his bed, which most of these people would be against I think because of how much they bitch and moan about US foreign policy at any given opportunity, he cannot actually make an independent foreign power do what he wants and what is electorally convenient for him. Like, I'm very sure Biden would love it if Netanyahu and his partisans stopped acting like fucking freaks for five minutes, if only so that it would stop being a PR nightmare for him. But that's not happening, because he cannot control what Netanyahu does. He could vastly reduce the support the US is providing Israel, and in my view he should, but that's not going to stop what Netanyahu and the Israeli government is doing. Because, I hate to break it to you, but the reason they're carpetbombing Gaza is because they want to be carpetbombing Gaza, and even without US aid they will continue to do it, even it just means with older and less effective weapons. Ultimately, the change that leads to a ceasefire and an end to the war is going to come from the actual parties involved, not Joe Biden.

Two, you've already gotten the significant policy change. Biden has, on multiple occasions now, come out in favor a ceasefire. He has actively been working, along with the Qatari government, to try and broker some kind of peace agreement between Israel and Hamas, but those two keep on fucking it up because they're both run by bloodthirsty psychopaths who don't care one iota about the people they're meant to be governing and only on killing whoever they want. That's been open fact for months now. And it has meant fuckall. The people doing their moral purity about how they'd never vote for Biden were still doing it, just moving the goalposts on what they wanted. First it was ceasefire, then it was 'no ceasefire until [insert impossible demand here] is given', because moving goalposts is what these people do. It's the same mentality as people who saw that Biden was doing COVID stimulus, or cancelling student loans, or reclassifying marijuana, and decided that the issue now was that he wasn't doing enough of it. It's a movement that's been consistently comprised of dogs that caught the car, and are angry that they caught the car because now they can't complain, and they don't want to actually affect meaningful change, they just want to complain because that's easier. And if that's what these people have been doing for his entire presidency, why on Earth would any reasonable person suddenly believe it's different on this one specific issue?

Three, cool you're protesting, then what? Your protest is utterly unserious and completely meaningless if it's not going to have any tangible effects, so what's the next step? You've decided to make your moral purity stance an issue that the vast majority of you learned from infographics on Instagram rather than listening to the voices involved (which is why the red triangle brigade is still a thing on Twitter), so what happens now? No political party is ever going to capitulate entirely to it, because the constituency is just too small (that "uncommitted" gambit was only getting like 10% of the vote wherever it was happening, Biden won over it as a literal write-in candidate in at least one state), so other than the compromise that's already happening, the goalpost movers are gonna withhold their votes because blah blah blah my morals. And their next step is, what? Trump gets elected. And their movement, which has no thought or serious effort put behind it or any actual attempt to provide material aid to the people actually suffering, has helped put a man who is going to be far worse for it in power. The "significant policy change" is going to be that Trump gives Netanyahu whatever he wants and he proceeds to wipe Gaza off the map. The "significant policy change" is that President "Trump Heights" actively makes things worse for the people this protest is supposed to help, as a consequence of that very protest.

It's not about me only being concerned with being "election focused" or some cold hearted bitch. It's about me, as a person who thinks what Israel has been doing since the start is godawful and deeply horrendous, realizing that this entire "protest" is not only asinine but will result in deeply negative consequences and very real harm for the people this protest is purported to be for, and being sickened by that. I live in the real world, and in the real world action speaks far louder than intent. I don't have to acknowledge that the protest wants this or that outcome or what the hypothetical impossible asks that are never going to be answered are, because I understand that they will not matter. What matters is what you get out of your protest, what gains are received, how that protest actually affects change, not the change it gives wishy washy lip service to.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jay Kuo for Think Big Picture:

We’re all still grieving the electoral loss and feeling queasy about the prospect of Trump returning to the White House in January. But in response to the giddy pronouncements from the GOP and the Trump campaign, some have already begun to think about an effective political resistance to Trump and Trumpism. 

Democrats need to make these plans knowing full well that Trump will be backed by a sycophantic GOP Congress and blank check-writing SCOTUS. And this time around, there won’t be any adults in the room, including White House counsel who during his first term would quietly shelve Trump’s most outrageous requests, or chiefs of staff like John Kelly who would struggle to moderate, educate and soften his most extreme positions. No, this time around Trump will be surrounded by people even further to the right of him. They will seek to implement the most dangerous and destructive of policies, many drawn from the Project 2025 blueprint. And they will encourage Trump to issue Executive Orders that could reshape American democracy, insert our armed forces deeply into civil affairs, hurtle our economy into an abyss, and upend the lives of millions of minorities.

This is a thought piece, an early stab (and work in progress) about how Democrats (and the lawyers who are aligned with them) can ready themselves to resist Trump. We’re in very new territory here, but the ideas are based on what we’ve learned about Trump from both his first term and the four years he’s been more or less idle when he wasn’t sitting in courtrooms or stumping on the campaign trail. They play into both his ego and the worst aspects of his character and leadership style. I hope you find this early exploration a good starting point for how the next four years could go if Democrats play their cards smartly, even if the strategy seems highly unorthodox. Note that I won’t be discussing what average citizens might consider doing. This, for now, is the beginning of a political and legal strategy. Others involved in grassroots organizing may have ideas for direct resistance by citizens, but that is for another discussion.

[...]

Hit ‘em with lawfare

One of the most effective weapons against Trump’s policies during his first term was the slew of lawsuits that his executive orders met when they were first announced. Remember the Muslim ban? That bounced up and down the courts for years before it could finally go into effect in a watered-down form. 

Lawyers from every non-profit walk of life should be readying civil complaints today, just as people like Russ Vought are already preparing horrific executive orders for Trump to sign. The minute Trump announces his Day One policy to deport millions of undocumented migrants, for example, lawyers everywhere should file suit. It shouldn’t just be one suit; it should be several. Tie up the White House lawyers and the Trump Justice Department with as many cognizable claims as they can think of. More than the sheer number, they should file these cases before judges in jurisdictions where the appellate courts will be more friendly, such as in the Ninth Circuit. This is the inverse of what MAGA and Christian Nationalist legal counsel have been doing now for years by picking a single court near Amarillo, Texas to ensure their cases are heard before radical judge Matthew Kacsmaryk.

Once those cases are filed, judges (and their clerks) should slow-walk them. Act like the nun in The Sound Of Music, opening the gate as slowly as she can so the Nazis are delayed. Then, after issuing temporary restraining orders, set the hearings out as far as possible. Have the lawyers demand extensions. File motions that could receive interlocutory appeals, to further gum things up. In short, drag things out as long as possible to prevent his policies from going into effect. Governors in blue border states could also get involved. California and Arizona both have Democratic governors, after all. And they also have Democratic state attorneys general. These states could move to intervene in suits or file them on their own, just as the red states have done to block Biden’s policies like student debt relief. Sure, this will eventually get up to the Supreme Court and get overturned, but the point is delay. Run out the clock, run out the clock, run out the clock. Trump only gets four years, two before the midterms. [...]

These are but a few broad-stroke ideas, but it’s time everyone who will be part of the resistance start thinking about how they can play a vital part in pushing back. Some of these tactics are admittedly unorthodox, others quite petty. Still others are variations on what has worked well before. Together, they could bog down or distract Trump and the White House just long enough for the midterms to give Democrats a chance to regain control of one or both chambers and really turn up the heat.

It may make many quite uncomfortable to consider deploying these kinds of strategies. They make Democrats into obstructionists, even political saboteurs, much as the GOP has been for the few cycles when Democrats have been in charge.  But here there is a difference, though it’s one MAGA Republicans will never acknowledge: When actual fascists have taken control of the government and are trying to destroy democracy, patriotic opponents must use every peaceful means at their disposal to prevent them. Indeed, it is a moral imperative, because millions of lives are on the line. We cannot act as if the world has not changed, and Democrats must grow far more accustomed to acting outside the box and getting creative in their approaches.

It’s time for Democrats to play rough by delaying and gumming up Donald Trump’s tyrannical proposals to run the clock down.

[tomorrowusa]

While perhaps it's too early to call it a "masterstroke", Joe Biden stepping aside for Kamala Harris will probably turn out much better than any Democrat would have predicted a month ago.

Kamala Harris will likely be the next president of the United States – and that’s overall good news if you care about democracy, justice and equality. Joe Biden’s decision on Sunday to bow out of the presidential race clears the path for the country to elect its first woman and first woman of color as president.

For people who need a historical reminder...

[M]ost people in this country typically choose the Democratic nominee for president over the Republican nominee time and time again. With the sole exception of 2004, in every presidential election since 1992, the Democratic nominee has won the popular vote (Biden bested Donald Trump by 7m votes in 2020).

Now for more recent events.

If, in fact, support for Democrats among people of color is the principal problem, then putting Harris at the top of the ticket is a master stroke. The enthusiasm for electing the first woman of color as president will likely be a thunderclap across the country that consolidates the support of voters of color, and, equally important, motivates them to turn out in large numbers at the polls, much as they did for Barack Obama in 2008. The challenge the party will face in November is holding the support of Democratic-leaning and other “gettable” whites, especially given the electorate’s tortured history in embracing supremely qualified female candidates such as Hillary Clinton and Stacey Abrams. (The primary difference between Abrams, who lost in Georgia, and Senator Raphael Warnock, who won, is gender.) Sexism, misogyny and sexist attitudes about who should be the leader of the free world are real and Democrats will have to work hard to address that challenge. One critical step to solidifying the Democratic base is for all political leaders to quickly and forcefully endorse and embrace Harris’s candidacy. Mathematically, it is likely – and certainly possible, if massive investments are made in getting out the vote of people of color and young people as soon as possible – that the gains for Democrats will offset any losses among whites worried about a woman (and one of color, no less) occupying the Oval Office and becoming our nation’s commander in chief.

We shouldn't forget that the VP's mom was born in India. A number of people in the growing South Asian community in the US who may not be especially interested in politics will be tempted to pause their disinterest and vote for Kamala. India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh have all had female prime ministers – so there's not exactly a taboo about women in power.

One way to measure enthusiasm for Kamala is to look at how much money is being raised by ActBlue. Not all the money ActBlue raises goes to the national ticket. I donated to a US Senate campaign in June via ActBlue. BUT the timing of recent donations leaves little doubt what the cause of the recent spike is.

For context, first some recent weekly totals (source)...

Week of June 30 through July 6 — $65,220,920

Week of July 7 through July 13 — $48,669,913

Week of July 14 through July 20 — $61,349,601

As of Noon today (CDT): Week of July 21 through July 27th — $150,042,360 and the third day of the week is just a little over half over. In the previous hour alone, roughly $2.44 million was raised.

These are small donations, not like the $45 million per month promised by multi-billionaire Elon Putz to Trump. So grassroots Dems are stoked and are out for a win.

ActBlue is fairly no-nonsense, it's not exactly Amazon in layout. So people are not drawn there by flashy graphics.

Kamala Harris — Donate via ActBlue