(7th September 2024, 9:29 AM)A Black Falcon Wrote: Dick Cheney is voting for Harris, the Democrat.  Now that's an insane sentence that nobody would have ever believed had you told them 20 years ago!

(11th November 2024, 12:44 AM)Dark Jaguar Wrote: I've said before that "at the table" politics matter most to the most people, and we both have acknowledged that economic shifts take slow effect and often aren't "visible" to the average person until an election cycle later, meaning blame/praise gets incorrectly assigned.

That said, there's more to it than that.  That's what I mean.  Pointing to ONE thing, the price of bread, and saying "that's the thing that did it" is too glib.

The one thing I hate hearing from democrats right now, and should have been hating all along, is this one phrase: "This isn't who we are!"  If this election proved one thing... yes it is.  It IS who we are, to a significant percentage, and we MUST come to terms with that reality now.

(18th November 2024, 3:36 AM)Devil's Advocate Wrote:

(11th November 2024, 12:44 AM)Dark Jaguar Wrote: I've said before that "at the table" politics matter most to the most people, and we both have acknowledged that economic shifts take slow effect and often aren't "visible" to the average person until an election cycle later, meaning blame/praise gets incorrectly assigned.

That said, there's more to it than that.  That's what I mean.  Pointing to ONE thing, the price of bread, and saying "that's the thing that did it" is too glib.

The one thing I hate hearing from democrats right now, and should have been hating all along, is this one phrase: "This isn't who we are!"  If this election proved one thing... yes it is.  It IS who we are, to a significant percentage, and we MUST come to terms with that reality now.

The more you read about how voters made their decisions, the more you realize that there was nothing Democrats could've have done. The majority of Americans simply aren't capable of critical thought and making informed decisions.

(13th November 2024, 7:18 AM)Weltall Wrote: Perhaps we should all be questioning everything that we've read, heard, and especially believed. 

The Democratic Party is moribund. I don't see how it recovers from what just happened, with any of the current leadership in place, or with their approach to doing anything, really. This was a comprehensive failure, up and down the ballot, from sea to shining sea. This all boils down to the fact that, in spite of the fact that Donald Trump lies pathologically, the Democratic Party somehow found ways to appear even less credible to the American people. They really did feel like things were better under Trump. They feel like things got worse under Biden. They voted accordingly.

You can blame it on racism, on sexism, on fascism, but in reality, I think a lot of people go ® without ever really considering those things. They hear "fascists" from one side and "communists" from the other, and it sounds like noise to them. They make choices based on other things, like the economy. You can show them how much better the US has done with regards to inflation, compared to the rest of the world. That's not the economy they care about. The economy they care about is the prices for the things they need to live, going up. Groceries gets the attention, but rent is a real killer for low-income people. That was happening on Biden's watch, they saw no real help coming from them, or meaningful attention being paid to their problems. They heard "things are fine, we're doing real good, look at the stock market!"

Not all Republican voters are mindless red hats, or even agree with them. They might be approachable in the future, capable of regretting how they voted last week. We can be ready to talk to them, or we can blame them for "voting wrong" and drive away a potential ally in the future. It's time for whatever the "left" is to ask a lot of hard questions and be ready to see reality for what it is. Otherwise, we can expect more of this. Forever. The quicker we put our emotions away and start trying to play the game to win, the better our odds.

It bears repeating, however: the Democratic Party leadership all need to go away. They quite objectively suck, they have been sucking for a long time. Their way of doing things has resulted in virtually zero sustained change. Most of my anger and antipathy is directed at them, and I want them all to go away. To lose twice to this clown and beat him, barely, one time, is malfeasance. I never thought it would be possible to be more disappointing than Hillary 2016, but that campaign looks like a triumph compared to what took place this year. Democrats are useless for saving democracy. Throw them all in the trash. 

(21st November 2024, 10:01 AM)Dark Jaguar Wrote: Trump, the man who acts like a living caricature of a cartoon "grifter salesman", somehow appears "genuine" to a lot of the populace.  I don't understand HOW that's possible, but I must accept it all the same.

(26th November 2024, 1:32 PM)Dark Jaguar Wrote: Right now, I'm absolutely furious at the talking heads on TV, so-called "left" networks like MSNBC, various democrat politicians, and ancient fossils with HBO shows like Bill Mayer, now stating that the democratic party needs to go RIGHT to win elections, literally arguing we need to abandon trans people entirely just as an example.

They don't seem to realize that "going right" will doom the democratic party.  No one anywhere who votes conservative is going to choose a "lesser" right when they have the full strength right party at home.

The democrats fail for one reason.  They learn the wrong lesson every time they lose.  They think "Alright, what did the republicans do?  Let's copy that!"  And they copy the party policy!  Except, then they're just copycats, and in a two party system, the copycat will always lose.  Every single time they have tried to "go right" to win, they have lost.  They lose the interest of the left, and they don't gain nearly enough right voting people to make up the difference, so they lose.

But, that seems to be what they plan on doing.  The democratic party is about to shift over the line to where the republicans were in 1999.

(26th November 2024, 10:41 PM)Devil's Advocate Wrote:

(26th November 2024, 1:32 PM)Dark Jaguar Wrote: Right now, I'm absolutely furious at the talking heads on TV, so-called "left" networks like MSNBC, various democrat politicians, and ancient fossils with HBO shows like Bill Mayer, now stating that the democratic party needs to go RIGHT to win elections, literally arguing we need to abandon trans people entirely just as an example.

They don't seem to realize that "going right" will doom the democratic party.  No one anywhere who votes conservative is going to choose a "lesser" right when they have the full strength right party at home.

The democrats fail for one reason.  They learn the wrong lesson every time they lose.  They think "Alright, what did the republicans do?  Let's copy that!"  And they copy the party policy!  Except, then they're just copycats, and in a two party system, the copycat will always lose.  Every single time they have tried to "go right" to win, they have lost.  They lose the interest of the left, and they don't gain nearly enough right voting people to make up the difference, so they lose.

But, that seems to be what they plan on doing.  The democratic party is about to shift over the line to where the republicans were in 1999.

At this point I'm afraid it's probably in the best interest for the Democratic party to hang back and let it get worse.