i'm glad i'm not the only one shitting on 3rd party/abstainers every chance i get. high and mighty morality police, usually saying shit like "kamala was always going to lose" while simultaneously trying to push the 100% guaranteed fail action of 3rd party or sitting out.

whether they're actually russian propaganda trolls or not hardly matters--they're shit human beings either way

Yes! Primaries primaries primaries.

Go and primary every single DNC candidate that isn't good enough, get better democratic candidates wherever you can. Put even more energy into primaries than into the election itself! But when the decision comes down to Churchill or Hitler, you better vote for fucking Churchill.

Everything else is just throwing the minorities and the future under the bus as a cost of doing business.

Wanna know how to pressure the DNC to pick a candidate you like? Go fucking vote for them in the primary!

Typically, the primaries get 1/10th the turnout of the general election. That means that a very small number of people can sway the primary. Go stump for your candidate. Make phone calls, talk to your family and friends and community, explain why your candidate is the better choice.

The lack of a primary in 2024 was fucking awful, but guess what? Chances are, there is a primary going on for your state right now, get to work!

Yeah...

To the people "wanting to teach the DNC a lesson", in the nicest way possible, you're fucking idiots.

They threw literally ever other minority group under the bus, and got absolutely nothing for it - if anything they actually got less than nothing, because Trump wasn't just going soft on Israel, he was actively cheering them on!

I will never understand the mentality of choosing that hill to die on... Like couldn't you guys have waited until Trump was at least off the board first.

Man was literally on his way to a lifetime in jail and bankruptcy, that he got out of scot-free because you guys decided 2024 was the time for a protest vote.

Go out and pressure the DNC to not be shit

How about you go out and draw the rest of the owl there? The main power we have is our right to vote, and you're saying we shouldn't use that to pressure the DNC to put forth a pro-worker anti-war candidate.

This continues to be the stupidest, least productive way to think about elections. The lesser of two evils argument may be true, but it failed to motivate people to vote for Kamala in 2024 (or Hillary in 2016, for that matter). You can bitch about protest votes or an apathetic electorate all you want, but at the end of the day, you don't win elections if you don't get votes, and, "yEaH, bUt TrUmP iS wOrSe," didn't get votes. If the Democrats once again run a candidate who doesn't reflect their base and once again lose the election, it will once again be their fault for repeating a losing strategy that produces losing candidates.

I'm a leftist who absolutely voted Harris, because the other option was horrific. I was not in love with Kamala but I did feel that she was a faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar better option. But I will not lie, I know several people who were basically exactly like the people you are talking about. It's disheartening.

neo libs must choose… either there is not enough progressives to demand a progressive candidate so they are not a large enough block to have changed the outcome OR they are large enough bloc to demand progressive cannidate and the democrats ignoring them cost them the election.

and they always pivot talking points

America doesn't have a left wing. America has a right wing and an extreme right wing. The closest to an actual leftist that America has is Mamdani, and America's so-called left wing politicians tried their best to make him look evil.

Some factors for losing:

• People were already salty that Biden even decided to run again, and then he forced a different candidate upon the voters.
• Status quo
• Woman
• Not white
• Zionism apologist
• Obviously dumb strategy to ditch the “weird” name calling, and placate the right.
• I not sure what to call it, but there is definitely an issue in our country of picking the “popular kid”, or “cool kid”

Her loss was a combination of many factors, including the support of genocidal Zionism. Do not ignore it.

I voted for Kamala, but I was pissed we didn't have a fucking primary. If we had a primary, we might have gotten Bernie on the ballot, or Elizabeth Warren, or Butegig, or anyone else. But instead Biden claimed to be running, then dropped out at the last minute so opps no time for primaries. I'm salty as hell that democrats didn't get a choice. It felt deliberate and coordinated.

The Gaza issue seems to have been pretty big

https://www.imeupolicyproject.org/postelection-polling

Also I don't think voters appreciated having her shoved in at the last minute.

Kamala lost because it was obvious from the beginning that she was a bad candidate whose only hope of becoming President was to be parachuted into the role via the 25th Amendment once Biden's mental state truly deteriorated. Unfortunately for her and the DNC, Biden's condition declined right as a key presidential debate rolled around, and his declining cognitive health became so utterly apparent that not even Reddit's tyrannical cabal of power mods could cover it up anymore.

Before that debate, even merely suggesting that Biden was senile would have gotten you labelled a Nazi and banned from at least a dozen subreddits.

THAT is why she lost to a convicted felon.

Its very hard to discern the real reason Harris lost in the election. Especially with interference the Right orchestrated with mail in voting and voting IDs, they tanked the left's momentum while gassing Trump's reelection with actual fraud. The results of numerous investigations was that if someone committed fraud or voted twice it was for a Republican candidate... but don't worry isn't not like Trump controlled the swing districts and threw away votes for Harris.

Only a moron would have looked at the two options we had and not picked Harris.

Was she a good candidate? Actually yes if you look at her Senate voting history. She was closer to Sanders than any other senator. She also, as VP, supported investigating Israel so they could bypass the law requiring us to give support.

Did she run a good campaign? Absolutely not. But, she basically had no time to actually run one. She needed money, fast, so she softened her stance on some things to secure it.

Was it a bad move? Yes. Was it a bad enough move to let Donald "I'm going to be a dictator on day one and you'll never have to vote again" Trump win? Absolutely not.

Harris chose to lose the most winnable election in history

Dems already shat the bed in 2022, handing Republicans a narrow majority in the House because they refused to pursue Congressional criminal misconduct from the prior administration or do anything about state voter disenfranchisement or gerrymandering while they controlled the federal government. Nevermind the clown car of corporate toadies and unloveable hacks they larded up with corporate donations.

Little reason to believe they'd do better in 2024, given that Biden made "supporting a genocide" and "rolling back COVID benefits" his central platforms for the next two years.

How is an election "winnable" when your party is married to policies everyone hates? It's like complaining about Mitt Romney losing in 2012, when Obama was underwater. The GOP trotted out an absolutely odious corporate turd - a man who literally penned the editorial "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt" four years earlier - and married him to a nepo-baby who hates social security as VP. Of course they fucking lost.

You don't get to talk about an election being "winnable" if you insist sandbagging the primaries to run loser candidates in the general.

2024 was Trump's election to lose. He capitalized on people's disgust with liberals. He leaned heavily on TPUSA, QAnon, and other effective social media campaigns to juice MAGA support. He promised to bail out TikTok, the only company that wasn't run by an American oligarch, while Biden was threatening to run them out of business. He rallied his base voters while liberals embarked upon the worst internal voter suppression campaign since 1968. And he did it all as fascist tendencies in the US were cresting.

Harris wasn't running a winnable campaign. She was struggling (badly) to bail out a floundering Biden debacle.

If we don’t abolish this system we’re all going to die.

Everyone dies eventually. But this government seems intent on accelerating things.

Trump can be long dead and buried, yet I feel like he's still going to be running in every US election for the next few decades. The majority of his supporters have only doubled down on his brand of politics, so there will always be another Trump.

The fact that they've been memeing about Trump having a third term tells you how excited they are about their actual prospects.