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Or, or or, and hear me out: The Harris and Biden campaigns chose to ignore the clear signal the Michigan voters told them with regard to their position of Israel and Gaza. You know. They thing the voters fucking told the campaign, at the fucking time. Not some post-hoc interpretation. You know, what actually happened.
And like, lets just work with what you've given.
'22: +13
'24: -14
'26: +22
We can interpret this as The Biden Harris position on Israel Gaza representing a net negative of 27 points. Farrrr more than sufficient for Michigan to have gone to Harris. Trumps behavior then accounts for 8 points of the swing.
So the choice was clearly to elect someone who was on the record talking about flattening gaza and rebuilding it as a luxury resort?
But those aren’t the only two options. For people who only care deeply about one issue, if neither candidate is on your side, many will just stay home.
Staying home is .5 votes for the other candidate in a 2 person race.
So you're using figures from a 2026 Michigan Senate election to extrapolate about how Michigan was so winnable in 2024 thanks to Israel–Palestine instead of the obvious "Trump fucking sucks and people are angry". This district swung about 5 points just from the 2022 race when Israeli apartheid was well in effect but before most Americans were concerned about it as a primary issue.
You can make the argument that Israel–Palestine mattered at the margins in Michigan in 2024 (which wouldn't even have decided the election); trying to argue it was "one of the most winnable elections of all time" (even if hyperbolically) at all let alone based on those 35th District figures is so obviously asinine that I don't even feel I need to explain it. I will offer that the 35th Senate District has effectively fuck-all in the way of a Muslim vote and that you don't magically get an approximately 9-point swing when you take Israel–Palestine out.
Edit: So you edited your comment to:
And then... What fucking numbers that I gave are you talking about? Seriously, where did you pull these numbers from? I didn't even have let alone offer exact figures for 2024 for the 35th Senate District; it just said "narrowly", so I assumed a sub-1% margin.
Where on Earth does "net negative of 27 points" come into this? Net negative what points? +13 what in 2022? I feel like I just dropped midazolam while I'm reading this. Nothing you've said is substantiated or makes any sense.
Jesus fucking christ, Michigan voters literally told Democrats they didn't want to support the campaigns positions on Israel-Palestine in the primary. No gymnastics necessary. They wrote it onto their ballots.
You are calling 11.7% of voters in this county/ district "fuck all". That's the proportion that told the campaign exactly what was necessary, and you are saying this 11% of voters aren't worth considering. This is precisely why Democrats lost the election.
Edit to the edit of the edit: I'm using district level & county level results for this specific district, which is why are numbers might disagree. We don't actually get district level results for national offices, so we have to interpolate between county/ district.
Where the fuck on Earth are you pulling this from? You just dropped a bunch of random-ass numbers in your above edit, and now you're just like "11.7% of voters". There is not an 11.7% Muslim vote in the 35th; are you on fucking meth?
Edit: "why are [sic] numbers might disagree. We don't actually get district level results for national offices,"
Buddy, it's in the article I linked when saying that. It literally says Harris "narrowly won" within the 35th overall in 2024. That's not double-digit percentage points; that's a percentage point or two between her and Trump at most. "Are" numbers differ because you appear to be pulling them out of fucking thin air.
11.7 was the "undecided" portion of Democratic primary votes in this county. You know. That campaign that happened specifically in Michigan where voters used "undecided" in an effort to move the campaigns away from their un-electable positions on Israel/ Gaza. Also, its like, pretty implicitly racist to imply that only Muslim voters were voting against genocide in Gaza. Its an aside, but its pretty glaring and you need to be called out for it. Many Michganders understood the importance of supporting their neighbors and community, both at home and globally, by opposing Biden and Harris's support for genocide, even if you didn't.
Oh, okay, so you just decided:
This is pigeon chess. You're trying lazy numerical sleight-of-hand assuming people won't actually question what you're saying if you say it authoritatively enough. Steve Bannon would be proud of your ability to flood the zone by throwing mountains of bullshit out and hoping people get disoriented enough that they stop bothering to check.
Bruh stfu. You can go look up any electoral map to confirm the numbers. Politico, ballotopedia, CNN. Go pick one. You the one pushing pieces off the table once bringing numbers up became inconvenient to your narrative. You the lazy sloppo because you don't even know the basic underlying results of any of these campaigns to be able to back up what you are saying, ALONG WITH complete and total historical revisionism.
I don't owe you the labor of chewing up basic facts about the election and spitting them into your mouth like a mamma bird because you are too ignorant or lazy to do so yourself. If you don't know things about elections, then maybe you shouldnt have a fucking opinion.
You literally just threw out numbers without any context and expected everyone to understand what you meant. You've since explained what you meant, but it's still only partially relevant to this specific district, and you didn't cite anything. Providing numbers without sources and presenting them as fact means what you said has no validity. The onus is on you to support your claims. If you can't do that, then maybe you shouldn't share your fucking opinion.
We're discussing the weight that Israel/Palestine had on the election and I cited the district level "undecided" vote.
For me that's more than plenty of context because anyone discussing election results, especially in Michigan, especially considering Democratic performance in '24, should already be aware of what was the superlative issues of the day were.
The people who don't recognize the context are either politically illiterate, or, more likely, didn't think it was important at the time that Biden and Harris change their approaches to Gaza.
Fortunately for us, with regards to commenters here, the latter is well documented and I know the apologists for genocide walking these halls only fake political illiteracy when it's convenient to their political objectives.
Ah. More, "voting for Harris means you are a genocide apologist" rhetoric. Short sighted, narrow minded, and the huge reason Trump is president. It takes a whole bunch of stupid and copium to justify sitting back and abstaining from voting or voting third party giving the clear advantage to Trump. Anyone that falls in that group doesn't actually care about Palestine/Gaza, domestic US policies, minority rights, or global relations, it's all just emotionally charged saber rattling to make them feel morally superior. If they cared, they'd have swallowed their pride and voted for the clearly better, but not perfect, candidate in a two party system. Damn near everything bad that's happened over the past 17 months would be better if Harris were POTUS right now.
No. Blaming voters for not voting for a pro-genocide candidate makes you a genocide apologist. If you don't like that, stop making excuses for the candidate, full stop.
It was true when it was happening and its only become more clear: Harris and Biden needed to not be in support of genocide to win the election. Period. There was no alternative thing they could have done and won the election. If you represented any kind of a barrier to this change taking place, you represented a barrier to stopping Trump from taking the white house. This election result puts the same thing which was obviously true in the primary season of '24 into even starker relief: The votes were there, just not for genocide.
Don't want to get called a genocide apologist? Easy peasy. Stop apologizing for the Democratic candidate being pro-genocide.
I'm not apologizing. I'm not saying I support genocide. I think anything but opposing it is a problem. I also know that Harris or Trump was going to be president. I know which one is better. If harris had won, there was at least a chance for change and with Trump the best case scenario was that he did nothing. With all of those facts, there was one clear choice for possible change in Palestine, and it wasn't protesting. Perhaps the protest will lead to long term change, which would be wonderful, but it also means a guaranteed 4 more years of Hell, possibly the complete deletion of Palestine instead.
You are. You quite literally are. You're literally doing it in this reply. You use apologetics immediately after saying you aren't apologizng. I'm sorry you don't know what words mean. I understand deeply what it means to live in a society that doesn't value education. Apologetics as it applies to rhetoric doesn't mean saying "sorry". Apologetics is a structural, rhetorical technique in philosophy and debate, and how you are making your case, its the definition of apologetics. You are definitively being an apologist.
An apologetic argument would be along the lines of "Thing A might not be great, but thing B is far worse. Therefore, it should follow that one prefers thing A." You are excusing, or apologizing for thing A as an argument against thing B. The rest is anecdotal (you use 'I' four times). Its an apologist argument to excuse the failures of the campaign.
That is an apologist argument. And it fails. Its a losing argument because we ran the scenario and we got the data. The same argument you are making here, it was basically the core argument the campaign made (both campaigns, the Biden phase and Harris phase were making basically the same argument). We tested it against US voters, and it lost.
It was the same structural argument used when Hillary was running. Sure she's number one with bankers, but Trump is worse. Its a losing argument. It loses elections. You can't be taken seriously if you are going to make arguments of apologia moving forwards, because we've tested this approach against voters sooo many times, and what we can confidently say, is that it loses elections.
Nothing about your argument addresses voter behavior in the real world. None of it addresses what the campaign could have done differently. It doesn't address the fact that in-spite of you "knowing" all of these things, Trump still won the election. It doesn't provide any insight into what it would have taken to win the 2024 election or what it will take to win future elections. It doesn't address that both the apologists and the Harris campaign knew all of this in advance.
What it comes down to: Your individual decisions are immaterial and what you think voters should do doesn't matter. What matters is what voters actually do. How they actually think. How campaigns get those kinds of information and how campaigns respond to them.
My argument addresses voter behavior directly. I'm saying anyone that didn't vote for Harris is either an idiot or a malicious idiot. I'm not apologizing for voting for Harris. It was easily the right choice. There are no perfect people, so you could argue that voting for anyone would make you an apologist for any of their shortcomings. It's just strawman arguments. It's possible to support someone and be critical of them without being an apologist.
Okay. Lets say thats the case. I don't agree, but lets allow the case. You knew this before the campaigns began. You knew it during the campaigns. The campaigns knew this to be the case. You continue to rely on this argument but you know its a losing argument when you take it to voters.
Answer for yourself. Who is this argument supposed to convince? The people who told you that Harris would lose the campaign if she didn't do things differently? The people who told you that they wouldn't vote for Harris if she continued to support a genocide? You have to answer the question of how your argument either changes the trajectory of the campaign for Harris or prevents a Harris like situation in the future.
Because right now, it looks like classic NPR liberal narcissism and naval gazing. You supported the "right" candidate in-spite of the candidate holding un-electable policy positions, so you get to wash your hands and tut-tut around the corner. Its an argument that pushes people away from Democrats, because, well you end up being an apologist for genocide. And then you have the audacity to pretend you have the moral high ground.
No you did, and you are, and you continue to. That's not up for debate. And following, its not up for you to determine outside of the fact that you can choose to approach the argument in a different way. Words have meanings. Right now, your argument is a form of apologia. That's how you've chosen to argue. You don't have to continue to choose to be an apologist, but thats up to you. I'm also not telling you its "wrong" to make your argument as a form of apologia, outside of the deterministic context that its the identical argument that the Harris and Biden campaigns made, and that it loses elections. The argument is wrong in the sense that it loses and continues to lose elections on behalf of Democrats, but its not wrong to make arguments from apologia. But what you are doing is definitively apologetic. If you don't understand why, I can explain it again, or you can go do some reading and self education on rhetoric and debate.
No. Just. Just stop. You don't know what words mean. The entirety of the point is that you are continuing to make the same argument that failed to convince the US people to show up and vote for Harris when Harris tried the exact same argument during their campaign. Harris also argued for herself in-apologia. And it lost the election. HIllary, in '16, also took the same route. Americans are not convinced by apologetics. And if this is the argument you continue to insist on using, you are effectively insisting on continuing to lose elections.
And if winning the election isn't the entire point, what are you (or Harris at the time) even doing here?
We can make a simple positivist argument (notice, a different type of argument) that if Harris would concede and change her positions on Israel-Gaza, there was a direct path for her to the Whitehouse. I'm making asserting a positive position on what she could have done to win the election. Do you see the structural difference?
You're right, the Democrats chose to ignore what the Michigan voters were telling them. And in response, Michigan voters didn't vote for Democrats, and the world got objectively worse as a result, because Trump was elected to office.
Democrats failed their constituents. And the constituents who didn't vote out of protest allowed Trump to become president and make the world worse--even knowing that he was the worse option. Both of these things are true. We don't have to pretend like it's one or the other.
Sorry to burst your bubble. The world is detaching itself from an evil empire. The world is healing.
The stuff your evil empire is doing is nothing new. Check on your history. The decoupling of vassal states is very new. They're finally speaking out against the puppeteer.
But but but... wait, that's not being empathetic toward your suffering, but you're fine with framing genocide of people abroad as checks note lesser evil.
US losing relevance in global stage IS a lesser evil in a bigger picture, not worse.
Really getting sick and tired of liars carrying water for the fascists by pretending their tyranny is business as usual.
You can blame voters till the cows come home.
But blaming voters doesn't translate into a credible electoral strategy. You can't "move" voters in the course of a campaign. You can only adapt to where voters are at. Thats literally what a campaign is.
I just.. Its exasperating constantly trying to explain to people that their resentment towards voters doesn't add up to a process which can win an election. Blue MAGA not wanting voters to behave how they actually behave in the real world, its truly a mental disorder, and it doesn't do anything to further Democrats ability to win elections. It does the exact opposite.
No matter how hard people dig their heels in regarding how voters should vote, it doesn't matter, because thats not how voters do voting. And if you base your premise on how you think things should be instead of how things actually are, well, thats how you hand two very easily winnable elections to Trump. Want to keep losing elections? Keep blaming voters and expecting different results.
You have the choice between winning elections or blaming voters. You don't get both.
People have the choice of a better life or their own smug self righteousness. Can't have both.
Harris wasn't offering a better life. She was offering the status quo. Trump actually was offering a better life to his voters. He lied. But he was offering a better life. His whole campaign premise was, "let's improve the lot of white people by deporting and repressing brown people."
Trump offered people a better life. Harris offered nothing. And Trump won as a result.
I mean literally. Trumps argument was basically "I understand you have economic pain, and its all these guys fault. Remember how things were before that global catastrophe? I'll make it like that again."
And Harris' argument was "No, you don't actually feel economic pain. You're just delusional and if you vote for me, nothing will fundamentally change."
This moment on the view. Its beyond a 'please clap' moment like Jeb!. It was such a preposterous softball, and delivered by the interviewer in such a gentle way. Its like watching a kids sports game, where they spend so much time lining up for the penalty kick on goal, and then proceed to kick it out of bounds.
This person has no place in politics.
Its like you almost get it...
And yet, you're not at all close to getting it...
It's wild to see people who genuinely think that the Democrats lost on purpose in 2024.
Just so unbelievably stupid.
I don't know how you could come to another conclusion. Like I genuinely don't, without the caveat, that I would have to then accept Biden and Harris as the least capable leaders the DMC has ever manifested, utterly unworthy of higher office.
It can't be both. The American people gave them 1.5 billion dollars to beat Trump and what they came up with was "nothing will fundamentally change", some C and B tier fake podcast interviews, and putting her face on a dome in Vegas with an.ominous message.
You can't credibly claim the campaign didn't know what they were doing. They did know. They didn't care because the managers of the Democratic party are not impacted by fascism the way you or I might be.