I mean, I’m voting and getting out and doing stuff. If I had two more hours in the day, I’d be advocating for ranked choice voting, but right now I’m putting all of my energies into trying to urbanize my city with mixed use, high density housing, actually good bike lanes, a road diet, and public transit.

I’ve had a lifelong habit of looking for and blaming systemic effects. I think you can safely say that the system we set up all but guaranteed apathy via two-party duopoly/FPTP.

I don’t think they expect to gain faith as much as they’re just checking out because they feel that any plausible outcome is irrelevant to their needs.

I could go on for days about what we need to do for housing, but it’s one of those things where I went into it giddy about the Harris campaign and came out of it saying “oh… Well, that’s alright.” It certainly didn’t feel like anything incredible.

Let’s not forget that Obama rode into office on the huge promise of fixing healthcare and providing a public option. He got elected on swinging for the fences and big systemic change. To his credit, he did try pretty hard that first term. The second term was much more jaded, and Obama himself seemed to shift right on a number of things, chiefly LGBT rights. But I digress, what big promises have we seen since then? Where have the democrats swung for the fences? I can’t remember a single equally powerful promise from HRC16. Biden had some okay ones, like student loan forgiveness, but nothing that felt equally powerful, I think. Kamala promised to codify Roe V Wade, which is something, but that was couched with expanding fracking and fixing housing by offering first time home buyer credits.

Faith in our systems (government, economic, civic, etc) has been broadly declining, alongside the portion of eligible population who goes and votes, for decades. It’s both cause and effect of how we arrived at the populist moment, I think. This started waaaaaaay before last October.

That all sounds great.

The first item kind of reads like “we’ll just go to the moon” once you start to think about it. It’s not impossible, but I think it’s not a realistic tasking.

Two and three definitely seems like something the DNC can and should be organizing.

Okay, but we’re here now. Blaming the voters and no-voters won’t help. Where do we go from here?

Okay, I’m seeing a lot of caps. Remember that our goals are more aligned than you probably think just now. I’m going to ask you to take a breath and know that I’m not trying to prevail against you. Rather, I’m trying to persuade you of the urgent need for the democrats to critically re-examine their strategy going forward.

What you’ve just said doesn’t seem actionable to me. What do we do with “JUST VOTE”? How do we execute on that and get a meaningful outcome?

It’s not about showing them. The democrats need to give people a reason to show up, or people won’t (and didn’t). Not being Trump isn’t enough, regardless of whatever your or I might wish. That’s all there is to it.

I voted for Kamala, I didn’t hold out. I’m trying to offer a tough and honest critique of how to move forward from this. The democrats have settled on a strategy of slowly shuffling right and being yesteryear Republicans on many fronts, and making mountains out of molehills when they do get the occasional small W. That’s reliably bitten them, as we saw in this last election; I think the exit data shows they flipped a total of 1% of Republicans. Meanwhile, Trump’s out there trying to buy Greenland, and the republicans went “okay, I guess we’re doing this”. It’s time to stop fretting about what the horoscopes say and start pushing on the gas as hard as we can.

Okay, then tell me, what do you do with “it’s the voter’s fault, we made no mistakes and deserved this win”? Because to me, that’s the political equivalent of shoving your hands in your pockets and blaming God. It’s a way to absolve yourself of any responsibility in how things went and of any need to deal with it. Because, I mean, what are you going to do, climb into the bible and fight God / climb into the CNN exit polls and fight the voters? That’s a non-starter.

No. There’s all kinds of people that don’t vote because they’ve accurately assessed that the system resists changing to reflect their needs. People don’t believe in the message of the parties or the government anymore. That’s why we’re in this mess in the first place. Imo, the problem is that the DNC is leaving voters on the table by not giving people something to show up for. Not being Trump isn’t enough. You might think it’s enough, but for at least five million people-- and realistically much more than that-- this last election, it wasn’t. The Democratic party needs to get its shit together, stop blaming voters, stop feeling entitled to people’s votes just because they’re not the other guy, and get out there and really start swinging for the fences. No more insurance regulations, promise universal healthcare; no more homebuyers credits, promise to plunk down commie blocks until homelessness is ended; no more highly conditional student loan debt forgiveness, fuck that whole system up with a hammer so that nobody needs to go into five-or-more digit debt to get a job. Don’t give me excuses or reasons, I’m not interested, Trump is trying to buy/invade Greenland, I don’t give a single fuck about what the legislative horoscopes say, let’s get out there and do it.

Nah, miss me with that shit. I voted for Kamala, but we’re on two, arguably three elections now (16, 24, arguably 12) where the big Democratic pitch has been “we’re not that guy”. Not “fix healthcare”, not “fix the housing crisis”, not “fix the student debt crisis”-- and bear in mind that when I say fix, I mean fix, not take a few small token steps towards addressing it (maybe)-- no, the big pitch is “we’re not him.” The two times now it’s failed to resonate, and reliably they blame the voters for failing to be inspired by their powerful message of not being the other guy. It’s political and intellectual laziness, they don’t want to have to make and keep meaningful promises (and potentially piss off big donors).

It is 100% on each political party to bring a message that resonates with the voters and gives them a reason to show up. Blaming the voter is a trap, it’s not actionable, and it’s setting the democrats up for failure all over again.

I love it even more. Local advocacy isn’t given half the respect it deserves; it’s far more powerful and effective than folks think. I’m doing a lot of local advocacy too, it definitely feels a lot less like shouting into a void.

I’m more addressing the attitude. Voter blaming is self-defeating, imo. I know that kind words usually read as sarcasm over the internet, but I mean it, good on you for getting out there and lobbying, I love to see it.

Get this tattooed onto your brain: voters don’t owe the Democrats victory.

Bitching about voters and no-voters is a dead end. Stop pouting and make a plan to do something about it.

The fucking guy is going to die of old age before he ever sees anything approaching justice.

As president, Jimmy Carter refused to recognize the legitimate government of Cambodia, instead recognizing the Khmer Rouge, who had been deposed by the (communist) Vietnamese military. We knew what bastards the Khmer Rouge were by then, but I guess it was better than recognizing the legitimacy of Vietnam. We’ve always been Trump’s America. Trump just gave us permission to drop the pretense.

Look guys, the empire is collapsing. I know things seem bad now, but they’re gonna get a whole lot worse.