Political Discussion and Commentary

It's only ~5 minutes long, and very worth a watch imho.

@4:31: "liberal democracy has been marked by its emphasis on procedures, not outcomes - we honor the process, even when we dislike the outcome; the drive to quickly get what we want even at the cost of bypassing procedures and undermining institutions is deeply dangerous"

I'm a bit confused why capitalists support Trump when he plans on doing stuff that I think would destroy the economy. Thinking of mass deportations and high, broad tarrifs.

I'm not sure if:

1. They just don't care because they have enough wealth to weather anything.
2. They don't think Trump will actually do these things.
3. They're dumb and think it won't hurt the economy.
4. They plan on trading wealth for more direct power. I.e. becoming oligarchs.
5. They have other ideologies (racism, Ayn Rand-ism, accelerationism, Dark Enlightenment, etc) that they prioritize higher than obtaining as much wealth as possible.

Or maybe some combination of the above, or something else entirely.

Edit: by "capitalists," I mean the "elite" like Musk and his other billionaire donors. But I guess it's a good question for smaller donors as well.

If you’re concerned about Trump’s nominations, the most impactful thing you can do is to reach out to your US Senators and voice your opposition. A large volume of brief phone calls do make a difference at strategic times. Immediately after a nomination announcement is one of those strategic times, because they are figuring out how/whether to respond publicly. Democracy must be fought for even after elections have ended.

Contacting Senators from both parties also matters right now. The prevailing message in the media is that Dems need to cater even more to Republicans to win the next election, they need to hear your voice if you disagree with that.

The most effective phone calls take less than a minute: say your name, your city or ZIP code, and what you support/oppose, maybe a sentence on why. You’ll be marked down on a spread sheet that is discussed at the daily office strategy meeting.

Other actions like brief emails, meeting in-person at the district office, meeting in-person at the DC office, can also be effective, but take more time and energy. Emails aren’t always read right away like a phone call must be answered for example. And you generally need to make an appointment for an in-person meeting.

Mass phone calls are a tactic used by the NRA and other powerful lobby groups. Getting a lot of their group’s members to voice their opinion is the key to their success…perhaps to the point of making an office fearful of the backlash via phone calls for going against them.

Relevant John Oliver segment

Find your Senators' contact info

"Secret" is tongue in cheek.

We know people flash the white power hand sign when having their picture taken, as if it isn't a racist dog whistle.

The Bloods have a hand sign. I'm impressed that one can spell the entire word with one's hands.

Jeep drivers have a cutesy hand wave that signals a common identity with other Jeep drivers.

AFAIK there's no hand sign that espouses the Eat The Rich sentiment. There's an opportunity to create something new where one doesn't yet exist.

If "Eat the Rich" produced a secret hand gesture, what would/should it look like?

I understand the argument of "This doesn't help; instead write to your congressman or volunteer to burp newborns." I get that, but this is independent of that.

This truly belongs in AskLemmy but their (justified) temporary ban on US politics seems to discourage this question.

1. I am not saying you shouldn't shame people for their voting choice as a demonstration of lack of critical thought or moral compass. You should.
2. I am not saying that all the political parties are equally guilty. I am obviously talking about Trump as the much greater evil of the available evils.
3. I am not saying that votes never count or have impact. They sometimes do.

All I really want to say is that blaming your friends and family for the election outcome is misguided and probably serves to benefit the political machine in its current form more than it serves to affect voter choice.

Am I the only one who thinks if the Democratic party couldn't win this election it's time for them to go the way of the Whigs? It seems obvious to me that this party has become a liability to this country and if they cared about it they would get out of the way and let a new party step up.

More of a recommendation, I suppose, but curious if anyone else has read & has thoughts on it.

I just sent this to Biden & Harris via the White House contact page https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/. I share in case you would like to add your voice and may find it helpful to have a pre-existing template to use or edit. Please feel free to share with others as you see fit.

Best, Atelopus-zeteki

I would like to add my voice in the call for a recount of the 2024 presidential election. I would also like to ask that you conduct a full investigation into tampering, interference, and fraud for this election.

· 32 bomb threats were called into democratic leaning polling places in swing states, causing them to be closed for extended periods of time on Election Day.

· At least one bomb threat was called into a vote counting center.

· Polling locations were closed while voters were still in line to vote.

· Multiple Ballot drop boxes were set on fire, in democratic leaning areas, losing thousands of ballots.

· Many voters reported not receiving mail in ballots, while districts apparently had not sent thousands of them.

· Hundreds of people in swing states are reporting that their votes have not been counted or even have never been received, though they were dropped off/mailed on time

· Some voters also reported instances of their outgoing mail not being picked up after placing their ballot in their mailbox.

· Voters also reported having their ballots invalidated for reasons such as invalid signatures, and given no chance to fix it.

We cannot allow election interference. Please order a recount as soon as possible.

The American people do not trust the results of this election. The people are concerned that there is outside interference – from foreign governments and from private corporations at least – in our election. We are concerned that this was not a free and fair election. We are concerned that we are being lied to and a dictator is trying to take over our government. I am begging you to do everything in your power to stop this from taking place. Thank you very much for your time and attention to this matter.

The ignorance displayed in their experiment at the end of this video is amazing. Just shows that everybody lies about everything.

Joe Rogan says that Elon Musk created an app that allowed him to know the election results hours before the results were announced.

Now is a great time for if I were there hypotheticals, so here's mine.

Once it was decided to run Harris and push Biden out, they should have gone all the way and used the 25th amendment to let Harris become president. This would have effectively separated her from Biden while still allowing her to take credit for the good stuff. She could have instructed the DOJ to start investigating price gouging now, and campaigned on needing to win to keep it up.

The 100ish days wouldn't have been enough for wholesale replacement, but it could have created a concrete message of this is where I want to go. A campaign focused on already delivering is a positive message people could get behind as well.

I sincerely don't know to what degree Trump and his crew may change the US, and by the looks of other countries, it could be as extreme as silencing the opposition by force. Are there any efforts to protect dissent? Can this be planned for and successfully fought back before it becomes a problem? Do you have a different view entirely?

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/exit-polls-2024-presidential-election/

While the democratic party definitely embodies liberal elitism in some ways, this shows that the commonly claimed “poor people vote Trump” really isn’t true.

Rich and Poor people seem to prefer Harris by a small margin, while middle class seems to support Trump.

I was just scrolling through some of the referendums...what exactly is going on here?

Hey Gaza / Free Palestine guys,

I'm pissed about the Kamala loss but that's not important right now. I need to know what media you were using.

Where did Free Palestine/ Gaza memes and discussions start?

I'm worried that the discussion is a right wing disinformation campaign designed to make us tear each other apart. I cannot find any legitimate politician (even far left ones like Bernie Sanders, AOC, etc. etc) that would have pushed the message of 'Joe Biden / Kamala is just as bad as Trump on the issue of Gaza'.

The only ones who would push that message are right wing trolls who try to separate us. So now I want to track down and confirm my suspicions. Who meme'd this? Where did you hear it? Was it Twitter? TikTok? Reddit? Facebook? Instagram?

[This is not an Original Post, But a Repost]

I've seen this narrative going around recently saying "16 million people didn't show up and that's why she lost" and it's wrong for two reasons.

1, Half of California hasn't even been counted yet. By the time we're done counting, we're going to have much closer vote counts to 2020. I'd assume Trump around 76-77 million and Kamala around 73 million. This would mean about 6-7 million people didn't show up not 18 million.

2. Trump is outperforming Biden 2020 by a pretty significant Margin in swing states, lets look:

Wisconsin:

2020 Biden: 1,631,000 votes

2020 Trump: 1,610,000 votes

2024 Trump: 1,697,000 votes.

2024 Harris: 1,668,000 votes.

Michigan:

2020 Biden: 2,800,000 votes

2020 Trump: 2,649,000 votes

2024: Trump: 2,795,000

2024 Harris: 2,714,000

Pennsylvania:

2020 Biden: 3,460,000 votes

2020 Trump: 3,378,000 votes.

2024 Trump: 3,473,000 votes

2024: Harris: 3,339,000 votes

North Carolina:

2020 Biden: 2,684,000 votes

2020 Trump: 2,759,000 votes

2024 Trump: 2,876,000 votes

2024 Harris: 2,685,000 votes.

Georgia:

2020 Biden: 2,474,000 votes

2020 Trump: 2,461,000 votes

2024 Trump: 2,653,000 votes

2024 Harris: 2,539,000 votes.

Arizona and Nevada still too early to tell, but as you can see, if Trumps support remained completely stagnate from 2020, Harris would've carried 3/7 swing states with a shot to flip Pennsylvania too. Moreover, if she had maintained Bidens vote count in swing states she would've lost most states even harder with the exception of maybe flipping Michigan and Pennsylvania being closer than it was. These appear to be the only states with a genuine argument for apathy/protest votes.

The turn out is NOT lower where it actually matters. The news articles that said swing states had record turn out were genuinely correct, you were just wrong for thinking it was democrats and not republicans. Almost all the popular vote bleeding comes from solid blue states deciding not to vote and it would not have changed the outcome of this election if they did show up to vote.

Every self-respecting Democrat or leftist who cares about themselves or their family should own a firearm and know how to properly and safely use it.
We're entering a time where it may be critical that you need to defend yourself. It is not out of the realm of possibility that you or your family may be targeted in the not distant future for your political leanings.
We all know that the Republicans have guns because they never shut the fuck up about them, and we also know that in their wildest wet dreams Trump will let them run the streets gunning down anyone who is isn't white or anyone who voted Democrat.
They have guns, they know how to use them, how are you going to defend yourself when they come for you?

cross-posted from: !trendingcommunities@feddit.nl , first line

https://feddit.nl/post/23599203

Active User Growth

!politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world, Political Discussion and Commentary, 131 => 621, 46 posts (9 this week)
!risa@startrek.website, Risa, 10 => 588, 2292 posts (3 this week)
!leftism@lemmy.world, Leftism, 345 => 1641, 311 posts (11 this week)
!mtf@lemmy.blahaj.zone, Transfem, 115 => 927, 518 posts (5 this week)
!lowqualityfacts@lemmy.zip, Low Quality Facts, 50 => 577, 45 posts (5 this week)
!anarchism@slrpnk.net, Anarchism and Social Ecology, 77 => 472, 372 posts (7 this week)
!dataisbeautiful@mander.xyz, Data is Beautiful, 40 => 359, 125 posts (4 this week)
!myalgicencephalomyelitis@lemmy.blahaj.zone, ME/CFS, 17 => 92, 9 posts (1 this week)
!godot@programming.dev, Godot, 71 => 439, 703 posts (2 this week)
!trans@lemmy.blahaj.zone, Trans, 245 => 771, 245 posts (13 this week)
!collapse@sopuli.xyz, Climate Crisis, Biosphere & Societal Collapse, 58 => 371, 349 posts (7 this week)
!newmexico@lemmy.world, New Mexico, 13 => 160, 24 posts (1 this week)
!lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world, Lemmy Shitpost, 8534 => 9640, 10813 posts (156 this week)
!electoralism@hexbear.net, electoralism, 638 => 1305, 1781 posts (54 this week)
!yurimemes@lemmy.blahaj.zone, Yuri memes, 81 => 308, 131 posts (3 this week)
!postillon@feddit.org, Der Postillon, 97 => 326, 84 posts (25 this week)
!dataisbeautiful@lemmy.world, Data is Beautiful, 440 => 922, 82 posts (4 this week)
!inperson@slrpnk.net, In Person Activism, 13 => 72, 103 posts (2 this week)
!nostupidquestions@lemmy.ca, No Stupid Questions, 24 => 163, 134 posts (7 this week)
!politics@lemmy.world, politics, 9849 => 10460, 14864 posts (292 this week)
!worldnews@lemmy.ml, World News, 2067 => 2861, 14370 posts (154 this week)
!gerrich@lemmy.world, Get Rich, 21 => 112, 62 posts (3 this week)
!eli5@lemmy.world, Explain Like I'm 5 (ELI5), 10 => 75, 9 posts (1 this week)
!meow_irl@sopuli.xyz, MEOW_IRL, 196 => 443, 386 posts (1 this week)
!forgottenweapons@lemmy.world, Forgotten Weapons, 73 => 226, 600 posts (4 this week)

Subscriber Growth

!flippanarchy@lemmy.dbzer0.com, Flippanarchy, 49 => 80, 51 posts (6 this week)
!world@quokk.au, World News, 185 => 211, 267 posts (66 this week)
!interestingshare@lemmy.zip, Interesting Shares, 927 => 986, 546 posts (12 this week)
!factorio@lemmy.world, Factorio, 857 => 913, 132 posts (11 this week)
!fedimemes@feddit.uk, Fediverse memes, 272 => 298, 56 posts (7 this week)
!astrophotography@lemmy.world, Astrophotography, 1694 => 1752, 139 posts (4 this week)
!historyruins@lemmy.world, History Ruins, 503 => 530, 185 posts (5 this week)
!nonpolitical_memes@lemmy.ml, Non-Political Memes, 904 => 940, 463 posts (19 this week)
!internationale@hexbear.net, Internationale, 78 => 88, 47 posts (4 this week)
!aiop@lemmy.world, AMUSING, INTERESTING, OUTRAGEOUS, or PROFOUND, 657 => 684, 862 posts (33 this week)
!goodlongread@lemmy.world, goodLongRead, 115 => 126, 99 posts (11 this week)

In light of the recent election, it’s clear that the Democratic Party needs a significant leftward shift to better address the needs and concerns of the American people. The party’s centrist approach is increasingly out of touch, limiting its ability to appeal to a broader base and especially to young voters, who are looking for bold and transformative policies. The fact that young men became a substantial part of the conservative voting bloc should be a wake-up call—it’s essential that the Democratic Party broadens its appeal by offering real solutions that resonate with this demographic.

Furthermore, one major missed opportunity was the decision to forgo primaries, which could have brought new energy and ideas to the ticket. Joe Biden’s choice to run for a second term, despite earlier implications of a one-term presidency, may have ultimately contributed to the loss by undermining trust in his promises. Had the party explored alternative candidates in a primary process, the outcome could have been vastly different. It is now imperative for the Working Families Party and the Progressive Caucus to push for a stronger, unapologetically progressive agenda within the Democratic Party. The time for centrist compromises has passed, as evidenced by setbacks dating back to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss, the persistently low approval ratings for Biden since 2022, and Kamala Harris’s recent campaign, which left many progressives feeling alienated. To regain momentum and genuinely connect with the electorate, a clear departure from moderate politics is essential.