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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?