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I think the better question is why a third of Americans didn’t bother to vote against this.
Voter suppresssion was a significant tie breaker. Also keep in mind that a lot of people get shafted by both parties and have given up.
I don't blame them.
I don't blame them for feeling shafted, but they do share the responsibility for the current state of things.
You are literally blaming the victims when you say they share responsibility.
Who? The non-voters? They're not exactly innocent victims in this.
Yes, both parties let them down, but those were the option and one was clearly going to do more harm.
Edit: I recognise there were legitimate barriers for some but I have trouble believing that was the majority of non-voters
Felons who are denied the right to vote, and felons who are only felons because they were bullied into false guilty pleas. People whose lives have been impacted by the violent and bipartisan supported war on drugs, including family members who have been killed by ridiculously violent police actions. When things are bad enough for someone, the lesser of two evils is still evil enough that there is no incentive to participate.
I'm not talking about the majority of the people who didn't vote. There are a lot of apathetic and willfully ignorant non-voters we can blame. We can also blame those that chose not to vote on a single issue when Trump was the obviously worse outcome for that single issue.
Ultimately the people that are the most to blame are the people who voted for Republicans.
I agree with all that.
Well, then I guess the victims are to blame this time, because that's not really up for debate in our current system.
"You must choose between being stabbing and shooting, otherwise we will blame you when the general populace that has been stabbing you your whole life votes in favor of shooting."
Sorry, I just can't blame people whose lives are destroyed by the system when they choose not to participate in the system. Choosing the lesser evil is fine for those of us where the lesser one isn't imprisoning family members through forced confessions or shooting relatives in no knock raids. Both available parties regularly campaign with being tough on crime and both follow through.
Nope, I refuse to blame those people for Trump winning when the alternate choice for them was more of the same.
Middle class whites? Yeah, fuck them if they don't vote
A very significant portion of those who didnt vote were just people that couldn't be bothered. And another significant portion were those who just abstained because Harris wasn't tough enough on Isreal, and I'm sure those people are happy with that decision now. Palestine will be free any day now, surely. Yes there is a lot of voter suppression, but things were way too close with a lot of people not voting to claim that that made all the difference. They weren't ALL disenfranchised. Plenty just made a choice not to vote.
So... I do blame them.
centrists support genocide and then blame everyone but themselves when genocide support isn't a winning issue outside of their wing of the party.
I'd have much rather had someone who was actually progressive, or at minimum, not supportive of Isreal's genocide. But that wasn't an option, was it? Harris and Biden's positions on Isreal were bullshit. But so was Trumps. At best they were a wash on that subject. And Trump was objectively worse in every other regard.
People that do not live in reality, that do not understand that under our system you often have to vote for the lesser of two evils to save yourself from the greater of them, are children that need to grow the fuck up.
I voted for harris. You don't have to convince me. Also, the election is over and you don't have to carry water for her anymore.
Just because centrists got their only wish and we didn't have a choice to vote against genocide, that doesn't mean we don't get to gripe about it.
Votes being close is why voter suppression and not voting for Harris because she wasn't good enough to use as a vote against Trump had such a big impact.
But in any democracy there will be a significant portion of voters who either aren't engaged or are unwilling to stand with the available options. You can blame them, but you should really be blaming the Trump voters.
I do.
I do.
To be honest, I would be more inclined to accept this if literally every state in the country hadn't shifted rightward, including deep blue states that not only didn't engage in voter suppression but also aimed to expand voting rights.
California of all states stared looking competitive. There was no voter suppression going on there.
So you don't accept that voter suppression is an overall issue in other states because California is expanding voter access?
ok
50 out of 50 states shifted to the right for one reason or another. Voter suppression has nothing to do with that.
You can either blame the voter suppression boogeyman or you can try to figure out why even deep blue states with no voter suppression started shifting rightward. Whatever makes you feel better.
It is a combination of things, voter suppression being one of them and a common tie breaker in battleground states.
When there is a shift, voter suppression is a common denominator on flipping close states. I'm just talking about one part of the overall issue, not saying it is the entire issue.
Since California was your chosen state to target:
Trump got less votes this time than before, the Dems lost way more, and still beat him by a pretty decent margin
What this tells you should be pretty fuckin obvious, because it's been said loudly since before the election: the Dems ran a dog shit campaign that even their usual supporters hated. Courting the Cheney's was a mistake