Thank you.
Thank you for dropping it, then.
Did you see what happened in the special elections this week? Even when the Democrats lost, they overperformed.
Consider:
So in just four years, the Democrats lost 84 percent (21/25) of their advantage over the Republicans in voters under age 30. The trend will have to greatly slow down for under 30 to still be a Democrats demographic in 2028 I guess someone will say that it would have been a little different if Harris talked about Israel differently, but you cannot do that without pro-Israel voters hearing.
If the Democrats want to win the next presidential election they must give us a candidate to vote for and a reason beyond ‘they are a Democrat.’ I called Kamala dumb on this board early in the campain as was critized. But that is how I saw her, dumb.
I do not know if Kamala is actually as dumb as she seems, but she sure came accross as dumb. Could not string two sentances together into a coherant statement at any time.
A better candidate was needed. And will be needed next time. This seems to be lost in the DNC.
Then the Republicans should stop saying that the Democrats are calling him stupid, right?
A note that 1) independents were a higher percentage of the electorate than Democrats in the last presidential election, and 2) independents favored Harris over Trump, though by a smaller margin than in the previous election.
Democrats will travel further down the road to nowhere by shitting on independents. It’s almost as bad a strategy as trying to have greater appeal to Jill Stein voters.
Emphasizing historic Democratic core issues like jobs, health care and individual freedoms while watching Trumpery self-destruct is still the best path forward. It’s hopeless to appeal to Trump cultists and people to whom democracy is optional, or a sign of weakness.
Full disclosure: I’m an independent who has voted heavily Democratic, with exceptions (usually not Republican ones) for truly atrocious Dem candidates like the pro-Russia far-left jackass who somehow won the party nomination for Congress in my district, or for offices like treasurer where I figure the Republican might be better with money. In the future, no Republican who hasn’t publicly repudiated Trump will get my vote under any circumstances. They’re trembling in their boots, I tells ya!
I am not sure how anyone can claim this when she had Trump as her opponent. When it comes to what each candidate said and which was dumb there really is no comparison (hint: Trump is the actual dumb one).
And now he is proving it.
It’s very simple. If you think non-voters had a moral obligation to vote for Harris as some sort of struggle against the evil of Trump, then say that. But to say they are the proximate cause or are somehow responsible for him being elected is silly.
It is arguable that they do have a moral obligation. Oh, not a strong one, but in any quasi-representative government, or other form of collective punishment (I kid but only just), making a choice has consequences for everyone. Which, they and the rest of us, are finding out.
NOTE, this is a sliding scale, there is NO moral equivalency between voting for Trump and NOT voting. One is an active effort towards converting the USA to one of the many flavors of authoritarianism, and the other is a passive abrogation of responsibility. One is a mortal sin as it were, and the other venial. But it still has it’s consequences.
I cannot speak for @DocCathode but I will say all US citizens have a moral obligation to vote. Ideally they educate themselves before voting and, of course, they can vote for whomever they want.
I can later tell them they voted for the wrong person if I want to. 
I do understand that point of view, but I would disagree with it. I would say that all US citizens who are eligible to vote have a moral obligation to educate themselves on the candidates and the important issues involved. But if, after careful consideration of these matters, they do not believe that any of the candidates represent their views sufficiently to deserve their support, then not voting is a morally acceptable choice.
I disagree. They can do a write-in as a protest vote if they want. Register their annoyance but also show their willingness to participate.
But, more than that, it is rare an election is for just one person for one position. Usually lots of elections are bundled into one long ballot. Are we to believe this person who has educated themselves on all they can vote for cannot find one they want to vote for?
I submit that person has a problem. Not least that no choice is a choice. They may not like any candidate 100% but surely they will find one they like more than another. Their vote counts to get the least bad choice in. They can work later to find a better choice.
sorry for not being clear, I was presuming a person who voted in the general election, but just didn’t vote for either Harris or Trump for President. I agree that someone who simply doesn’t show up to vote at all is suspect and not doing their duty as a US citizen.
And I’m not a political strategist myself. I just personally have little patience for what I call “Insane Centrists”…people who see Trump for what he is, but at the same time try and put the same characteristics on the Dems with no evidence at all.
What evidence do you have that she’s dumb? I can probably produce 1,000 links to back up opinions that Trump is an idiot. And I do remember that she tore him to pieces in the debate. The only thing that I saw that made me think she was dumb is that the right-wing labeled her as such and had videos of her laughing…The “Kamala is dumb” thing was a right-wing label based on essentially nothing.
I agree with almost everything you said in your preceding paragraph, and I’d go further and say the Dems are partly responsible for the increase in executive power we’ve seen in the last several decades that Trump is now taking advantage of. It’s part of the reason I voted third party for president in 2012 and voted for Bernie in both primary campaigns he was in.
However once Trump was on the ballot I got in touch with my outer adult and voted for democrats running against him. It didn’t have to choke down my distaste because the choice was beyond obvious. This is why I get mad at voters who should know better and yet chose to play with fire, hurting both themselves and me. The democrats agenda is not due to lack of introspection on my part and I’m aware enough that some things are more important than my feelings of being wronged by party elites.
A few days ago, I went shopping at HEB in Austin. I was shocked to see that the same cart of groceries that would have cost $45-55 pre-pandemic were now…$92. I wasn’t buying sturgeon caviar; I was just buying the normal things I’d have bought in 2019.
I’m not saying it’s Biden’s fault, of course. But there are a great many voters just like me who would have thought, “Having the D’s in power hasn’t helped me make ends meet financially any more easily than before. It’s been worsening all the same.”
I know you’re aware that the inflation we’ve had since the pandemic was mostly from supply shocks and was worldwide.
I wonder if there were independents who had the same concerns you had, and then heard Trump promising over and over to increase tariffs, and thought, “yeah inflation is a wash” when one candidate was supporting a policy that absolutely is inflationary and the other candidate was part of an administration that presided over temporary inflation that had mostly subsided…
People have been polled as believing that the Republicans better with the economy since at least the 1980s as I recall, despite all evidence otherwise.
As for why? IMHO, it’s because Trump and the Republicans are blatantly evil, and there’s a widespread belief that evil is better than good in our culture. Smarter. More profitable. More powerful. More efficient. Even people who support good over evil tend to think of it as a self sacrificial, self destructive choice made for moral reasons despite the cost. So while it’s never actually spelled out that way, the worse the Republicans act the more convinced the public becomes that they are more capable and effective than the Democrats in every way, no matter what the record shows.
I recall reading how back in the 1930s it was predictable enough that fascists consciously marketed themselves as more efficient and productive (“the trains run on time”) under the explicit logic of “they think we are evil, therefore they’ll believe it when we tell them we are more productive and efficent than them.” And it worked then as it works now.
I think I understand you correctly now. Yes I believe that if a person can safely act to prevent evil, they have a moral obligation to do so. I addressed the pointlessness of voting third party in a Presidential election. Thus, every voter had two choices. They could vote for an evil hate-filled toddler who would do horrible things if elected, or they could vote Harris. Harris was, at worst a politician they disagreed with.
I can see see disagreeing with that position. But how is it silly? If you have the opportunity to prevent evil from happening- with no danger to yourself at all- and you instead choose to do nothing, how are you not responsible for what happens?
This goes to the heart of the much-debated “trolley problem” and it’s brethren.
The bottom line is human moral sentiment has a bifurcation in it. Many people’s deep-seated unconscious moral philosophy sees that inaction in the face of evil confers zero responsibility. Other people’s equally deep-seated unconscious moral philosophy sees that same inaction as at best negligence and in some cases as aiding and abetting the evil.