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“This Is a Collapse of the Democratic Party”: Ralph Nader on Roots of Trump’s Win Over Harris
(www.democracynow.org)
this post was submitted on 06 Nov 2024
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They need to fire the leaders of Democratic party. Find new blood and new direction. Swing to the right didn't help them.
This is why I'm hoping that all the impending hardships reflect poorly on Trump's term, and he can merely serve as the Hoover to an FDR-like successor.
Would be great if we avoided all the unnecessary deaths along the way, but we wouldn't be human if we didn't insist on learning everything the hard way.
So they did that once, Hillary was all set to take the nomination in 2008 then this young charismatic guy took the nomination. Obama served 2 terms and the Republicans lost their mind over it....
..... but maybe the Democrats did too? Because Hillary still thought it was Her Turn in 2016, and there were a lot of machinations to make sure they didnt run a Socialist. Then I distinctly remember all the shenanigans to insure that Joe Biden got the nomination in 2020. And we all know what happened this year. I actually think Harris was a good candidate, I just wish she got the chance to prove it in a meaningful primary. (Edited to add: if she had lost a primary, all it would have meant was that Democrats would have found an even better candidate.)
The Democrats do have a deep bench of Governors and Senators who might make really good Presidents. They even proved that strategy worked in 2008. I wonder why they are so afraid to prove it in a primary.
Disagree, Harris would not have been close to winning at all if there was a primary. Even Tim Walz would have absolutely smoked her in a primary.
While I'm not as sure as you are about that, if it had happened that way I wouldn't have minded at all. I liked Harris as a candidate, and feel she would have made a fine President. but I also like other Democrats.
We'll have to watch Walz. His current term ends with the 2026 election, and while he's not term limited he has already been in office for two terms. This campaign might give him the bug to try again in 2028.
I agree that it would have been better to have legitimacy, despite the results. Now you have legitimacy, and bad results.
Harris didn't even win her home state in the primary she actually competed in. She was always the wrong choice.
The only criticism I have with that is the transfer of campaign funds. Harris was able to take control of the war chest immediately. That's the one justification I can see for giving her the nod.
But when Obama won the nomination the DNC didn't support Obama in the general.
So Obama ignored the DNC for 8 years and let it fester until 2016 when Hillary's primary campaign took control of it they shady backroom financial deals that resulted in her campaign getting approval over what the DNC did during the primary.
There was a brief window Donna Brazille got in leadership and showed everyone the receipts, then Hillary's people got back in control and Biden kept them.
With Kamala losing the DNC votes for it's own leadership, and will likely retain like they always do.
Obama has the chance to appoint progressive leadership to the DNC and fix the party, but instead he ignored it as a relic.
And we're still paying the price.
Because challenging the party favorite is career suicide when the party is corrupt.
If Obama hadn't won in 08 none of us would remember his name, and the party did nothing to help him because they knew if he won he could change leadership.
They got lucky and he choose not to fix the party
Obama, sadly was a failure. Better than any other president since FDR and Carter, but that's not saying much. America wanted change and all we got was the ACA from him and a few less terrible trade deals. Obama deported more people than Trump and never fixed the decline in the middle class. I turned 18 when Obama first ran and was so excited for all the "change" and nothing improved sustainably for the average American. He could have solidified himself as the best ever but road the middle too often and now the party is officially dead.
We keep using that line about deportation but the problem is deportation is popular. Speedy removal and asylum in Mexico are popular. It's easy for people to blame immigrants.
In the same polls Americans support deportations but also legalization of immigrants in about equal measure.
https://www.vox.com/policy/368889/immigration-border-polls-election-2024-trump-harris
https://news.gallup.com/poll/647123/sharply-americans-curb-immigration.aspx
Republicans have primed Americans into thinking illegal immigrants are criminals bringing in crime and drugs into the country. Which is completely fabricated and untrue. However, since Biden, Democrats have failed to counter message and instead adopted the right wing on immigration. That's the entire reason we see this contradiction. A genuine counter message would be popular. And it's essential considering that Trump is going to start mass deportations, which means concentration camps for millions of Americans
I agree, under the heading that if they can cart anyone away that easily, they can cart me away that easily.
Yeah, the concentration camps will absolutely extend to any legal immigrants, and even people that look 'immigrant passing'. (Not white immigrants like from Canada or Europe of course, it's all racially motivated). I won't be surprised if Trump begins to deport political enemies
The issue is the same with trump.
A lot of stuff is dependent on people "doing the moral thing".
The DNC is a private organization, and if they decide to keep making the terrible decisions they've been making, there's not a lot we can do about it.
Their platform for a decade has been "what are you gonna do, vote trump?"
So I really really think that today being the day after the election is the day we start talking about a third option in 2028. There's no reason to expect the same people who have been running the DNC to magically change this time or even just get out of the way for the best of the country.
We can't just "find new leadership" because when a Republican wins, the DNC votes for its own leadership and almost always elects the same kind of people if not literally the exact same people.
The people: Yes
But seriously, the Democrats need to get better candidates, and they need to take a long-hard look at their policy agenda. The people don't want it and will literally vote for Trump before what Democrats are offering.
That's not what I'm seeing.
Obviously totals aren't in yet, but looks like trump gained a million voters and Dems lost between 8-17 million
Which is what I've been saying for years. The danger isn't cross over voters, very few people bounce between parties.
What matters is energizing your own base and getting them out to vote.
Dems keep pissing off their own base to court Republicans and it never fucking works
Because what people will do, is just not vote.
Which is what just happened. And at the end of the day the entire point of a campaign is to motivate voters, this is a failure of Kamala and her campaign.
Might I recommend supporting the Forward Party.
They're trying to build a whole New Kind of Party, genuinely from the bottom up. Focusing on local politics, where election rules can be changed to make representatives more responsive to their voters. They're quite unlike other 3rd Parties that just run pointless presidential candidates every 4 years.
Then there's RepresentUs. Not a Party, but a political organization trying to do the same. Fix our election system at the state and local level.
Andrew Yang was one of the best spokesmen for UBI. Unfortunately, he got bought out by big Pharma to drop support for universal healthcare and stop advocating for UBI. Both have same rationale. His party of "consolidating moderates" is just pro-neocon warmongering coalition.
I hope forward party can become something different. Back to UBI roots.
Forward doesn't even need to exist after achieving open primaries, ranked choice voting, and multi-member districts. Until that happens UBI won't be possible with the corpo duopoly we have.
Parties don't have to be perminant. Even less perminant should be our support. Other parties will be possible when our process is fixed. Which ever ones support any form of UBI will get my support. But that may be a decade away or more.
Fine. Then people need to do something about it. Because the people saying it this time didn't. Despite asking over and over, I found one person this year on Lemmy who said they actually worked for a third party's campaign.
And when you asked them which third party candidate to vote for, they generally wouldn't give me a name. If you can't rally around a single candidate, you will never win.
Also, I'm not sure why abandoning something is better than fixing it from the inside.
Because fixing something from the inside takes work and time. And it's not like it wasn't happening (as much as I'm not a fan of it because I actually am one of the evil liberals people here love to complain about), people like AOC or Tlaib would never have been prominent voices ~20 years ago. But generational change happens over a timespan of, and I feel that it's very odd that I need to point this out, generations.
Starting from scratch takes as much work and time, doesn't it?
More, and that's assuming you can ever build momentum. I wasn't defending the choice.
They've already started the talking point that they swing too left and that's why they lost
Fuckers will NEVER learn.
They don’t want to learn. They’re both right wing parties.
Yeah, courting far left people like Dick Cheney was the problem. Next time they will just run Ivanka Trump and if you're against her, you are a misogynist.
Just kidding, they won't run her until she's at least 60, everyone knows people who are younger than that can't politics.
https://democrats.org/contact-us/
Their system is so bad they accepted "gofuckyourself@fuckyou.com" as my email so go have a blast. I encourage everyone to do so.
I told them all to resign and congratulated them on chasing the mystical moderate all the way off a cliff.
Thanks for doing that, they'll probably be sorted out by 2026!
Really think they have the ability to see that? Because I don't. Nor does history. My gut tells me the Dems are going to move dramatically further right after this because "they didn't appeal enough to the 'center'" and "they can't rely on the left to support them". Our only option might be a leftist coalition committed to not voting dem until they capitulate or we gain enough support to be a viable party.
Worse, they do not want to. That would be bad for their billionaire buddies. The same buddies that funnel untold millions to both parties at the same time, to ensure they get what they want either way.
No, watch, they’ll run someone like Gavin Newsom in 4 years.
Ooh is it his turn?
I've seen stirring of it.
Paywalled link, but you can see enough: https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/emilyhoeven/article/newsom-trump-democratic-party-19893871.php
That's been the talk.
Better not be. He’s 100% a corporate suit.
Hahahaha, he's been lining up a 2028 run for the past few years.
So guaranteed?
We need better people who won't vote for Trump.
Seriously though - Biden did win. And your conclusion now is that that they need "new blood"? Biden's as old-blood as you can get.
I love how everybody is blaming the party rather than the idiots voting for the crazy grandpa. Kamala was the better candidate. The people are broken more than the parties.
Biden barely won. No one should take 2020 as evidence of expertise. That was an embarrassingly nail-biting result.
I mean, he did win tho.
Kamala was the better candidate. But that doesn't mean she was a good candidate. If they want to win then making people choose between a pile of shit and a turd sandwich isn't the winning move.
They were choosing between a competent adult and the first US president to actively try to overturn the results of an election in the United States. A potted plant would be a better option than Trump.
Who do you imagine would have done better? Trump is promising the biggest deportations in US history - you think an ultra-liberal is going to compete with that?? The people of the United States are terrible - they picked this - they are to blame.
Kamala wasn't the better candidate. Biden would've done better. They forced the old man out in the middle of a campaign. Kamala never fared well on her own. Stupid Dems thought because Biden lost the debate he'd lose the election. Well Trump lost the freakin debate, but did it matter?! NO! THAT'S why they need to be gone. They got lucky with Biden. They ain't getting lucky again.
Trump lost the debate in a way that spread his message and read like standing up to the liberals to his base. Biden lost in the way that said, "I'm done, let me retire".
Biden barely beat Trump in 2020 and is now much older and the incumbent who people typically blame all the current issues on. They made the right choice forcing him to step down but he never should have run for a second term in the first place but instead defeat Trump and run a single term like he said he would in 2020. The DNC should have spent the last 4 years grooming someone more appealing to the public instead of trying shift the party to be more like the Republicans.
Yeah, Harris's campaign was bad, but she at least had a chance. We wouldn't be as devastated today if Biden was the nominee because we'd all know the result. What would have been much better was actually having a primary rather than needing to tiptoe around his ego for half the campaign.
What do you do when the nation wants a fascist and you don't want a fascist? Do you run a fascist just to win? Or do you lose elections?
We're blaming the wrong people. Trump won by stoking fear, prejudice and outrage. How do you compete with that without feeding it?