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Copy paste from elsewhere in the thread.
You seem well-meaning, but the racism/sexism card is way overplayed at this point in the game. The two examples DNC sympathisers point to for why an AOC run is a bad idea both lost not because they were women, but because they were utterly terrible politicians. I wasn't around for Hillary so I can't go into too much detail, but Harris specifically did her utmost best to destroy every single ounce of goodwill she had. And as for the racism, well, America did overwhelmingly elect Obama in 2008. Even on the far right you see MAGA elect women and minority politicians they agree with (see: MTG), so there's no way the everyone left of Reagan coalition wouldn't be able to elect AOC due to sexism. It's just a complete and utter non-issue.
You say that, but I personally know people who voted for Trump over Harris specifically because she was a woman. I personally know people who voted for Trump over Clinton for the exact same reason.
Don't get me wrong, I'm fine with AOC myself and would vote for her, but to pretend that it's a "non-issue" assumes that the average person doesn't care. Many people do actually care, and ignoring the existence of those people is poor strategy. Maybe I'm overestimating the number of people who care, maybe not, but it is unfortunately a real concern that won't magically go away by pretending people, as a whole, are more enlightened than that.
I mean sure you can find people who think or do basically anything; I haven't seen any evidence that this is a significant group of people, even though if it was it'd show up on polls before and after the election. I'd also bet good money no such evidence exists, because if it did libs wouldn't shut up about it. Meanwhile plenty of evidence exists that the most significant factors in Harris's loss were the genocide and her being a rightwing ghoul.
And people voted for Trump because he's rich. Does that mean we only need to run rich candidates. Fuck no. There isn't a large enough group of people who would otherwise vote for someone like AOC who wouldn't because she's a woman. Either her positions are strong enough to win or they aren't. The woman thing is bullshit, and it's just people trying to push for a more generic candidate that doesn't represent us.
Uh... did you mean to say "Hillary" up there at some point? Because "Kamala" and "Harris" are the same person...
Except when Obama was elected the right lost their ever loving minds. And Fox went off the deep end. The entire right wing propaganda machine has gone nuts for the last 18 years and unfortunately it worked. Acting like it's currently the environment of 2008 is blind.
As a leftist I have a completely different take.
Obama's campaign made me realize what it was like to have a politician work for my vote. All that "hope and change" rhetoric actually worked on me. Somewhere in his eight years in office I realized he was full of shit but it gave me optimism for the future. That optimism blossomed as I listened to Sanders speeches.
So when Hillary Clinton came along and started setting herself in opposition to Sanders and ultimately defeating him I realized Hillary Clinton and the entire Democratic party think they can just assume I'll support them so long as they run against a Republican who is much much worse.
They're wrong.
Republicans haven't gotten stronger. The Democratic party has intentionally weakened itself because rather than serving the American people they want to serve corporations, Israel and their own egos.
As a vulnerable minority (trans) being targeted for active genocide by the Right, I really wish that WAS enough for Democrats to get elected
That didn't respond to anything I wrote. The right wing media went nuts and it worked. For 18 years. We can't act like those 18 years of propaganda didn't change anything because it did.
But anyway to respond to what you wrote, I think the best way to address this is you're looking at the parties, while I'm looking at the votes.
Hilary said she'd a map room to (read, go to war on) fight climate change. The left never came out. Biden went to good old politics. Won. Kamala relied on woman's rights. The left never came out. Guess what will happen next time? They will not rely on the left. They will go after the center. The center that actually shows up. (Also see my other comment.)
This completely misses the point that Kamala didn’t win a primary. You can’t say “didn’t get support” because she wasn’t “the candidate” in the first plac You’re working really hard to tell this thread why voting is pointless
I wonder why
Me: vote.
You: why are you telling people not to vote?
Unreal.
We're not talking about the right, though; we're talking about the left and center. You know, the people who voted for Obama, and who would be expected to vote for a Democratic candidate. Why even care what the right thinks?
Sure, but that cuts both ways. Just like the right is more fascist today, the left and center-left are more progressive and more willing to listen to radical voices. Your implicit assumption that all of America shifted rightwards doesn't match up with reality.
My point was about the last 18 years of right wing propaganda. We can't act like it didn't happen and that we're in the same place as 2008. Like it or not racism has revived. Talking about mass deportation was unimaginable back then. And now it was a major platform that won.
You don't have do go very far to find "my dad was the greatest, didn't care if people were black" to, well, I won't repeat much of the Qanon. There's a whole sub for it, remember? QanonCasualties. That's the point of propaganda, to spread the message, to increase their numbers. And no it doesn't cut both ways because left media is beholden to the truth, and right wing media can do whatever they want. And they do. And they grow. Most popular "news" source is what? Fox. You are missing everything. Like fucking everything.
This is more of a rant than a response to anything I actually said.
It's a little disjointed because I edited in the first paragraph, but yes it does respond to what you said.
Do you want a line by line breakdown? Ok.
Agreed. And guess what? The right wing's propaganda machine has reached the center. That's the whole point. 18 years of hardcore propaganda has reached the center. That's the point of propaganda.
You don’t have do go very far to find “my dad was the greatest, didn’t care if people were black” EDIT AT ADD: "and voted for Obama". And those people changed to, well, I won’t repeat much of the Qanon.
There’s a whole sub for it, remember? QanonCasualties. People that were formely center or Obama voters that got suckered in. That’s the point of propaganda, to spread the message, to increase their voters.
The whole point of propaganda is to reach other people. So it's not what the right thinks, it's how the people that were formerly center that have been suckered in to the right's propoganda will vote.
No it doesn’t cut both ways because left media is beholden to the truth, and right wing media can do whatever they want. They lie their ass off. They twist. They appeal to easy emotions like fear and anger. The left media can't do that.
The most popular “news” source is what? Fox.
You are missing everything. Like fucking everything.
You're the only one talking sense here.
The Right has shifted the overton window so hard to the right that Fascism is a mainstream opinion. Heck it's considered more rude to question Fascism than it is to question Trans Rights.
Nobody gives a fuck what the right thinks or your fearmongering in favor of it. Knock it off.
You think I'm trying to fearmonger, or that I'm ??? in favor???? of it? Lol no. I'm baffled how you can even read that.
I am observing that the right wing media has been going nuts for the last 18 years. We can't ignore that. And the whole point is that it's not limited to the right wing audience, they got their message to the masses.
You make zero sense, and I read this as fear mongering as well
Why are you working so hard to ensure people feel dejected about voting?
You're making complete sense here. If Obama had been white, Trump never would have happened. Hell if Hillary had been a man, Trump never would have happened.
This, back in 2008, North Carolina went Blue for Obama. It went red for Romney in 2012. Why?
Well as someone who remembered the Churches pleading with everyone to "Vote for the Mormon over the Muslim" I can tell you.
It's because the beehive hadn't been kicked yet. The idea of a black president seemed like a wonderful sign of the progress we made as a nation. When it actually happened, that retroactively became a bridge too far.
There was a silent contract, racists could be polite and civil. A black man could be equal to a white man, as long as everyone silently agreed the white man was "more equal"
When the President was black, well, that was seen as a violation of the social contract. The same people who voted for Obama to show how "Not racist" they were, suddenly became furious that he won. Because the "contract" compelled them to outwardly appear non-racist by voting for a black guy, but when it was "violated" by his election, these same people proudly dropped the Hard R to describe the leader of the free world while watching Fox News.
am I making sense?
I agree, but I put it more down to Fox et al than the social contract.
I would change it to: " The same people who voted for Obama ~~to show how “Not racist” they were,~~ because they were open to the idea of being not racist ~~suddenly became furious that he won~~ were bombarded by Fox how terrible Obama was and how horrible Democrats were. And they slowly but surely absorbed that message. "
Fox went absolutely apeshit after Obama was elected, they wanted to do everything they could to bring him down in any way they could. And their rhetorical techniques are good at appealing to people (inb4 lemmy's seeming misreading, it's disgusting, but I observe that it works).