very_well_lost @ very_well_lost @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

Hear fucking hear.

That's true, but Trump's team is already lobbying the incoming majority leader to call an intentional recess so he can ram through all the appointments he wants without any Senate oversight.

Whether or not that happens remains to be seen, but I wouldn't bet money on the new majority leader standing up to Trump on day one, right after he was elected with a significant mandate and handed full control of the legislative branch to Republicans. More likely, Thune will fold to whatever Trump demands until the the political winds begin to shift and Republicans need to start playing defense for the midterms. At that point we might start to see the Senate push back on Trump's agenda if his approval ratings have gotten are low enough and the Dems have gotten their act together enough to run some decent congressional campaigns.

Some Senate Republicans are signaling that they won't vote for him, and it wouldn't surprise me all that much if 4 Rs defect to block his confirmation.

Of course, Trump can and will still force him through as a recess appointment (fitting, giving Gaetz' track record on consent) which will secure him as AG at least until the midterms when the balance of power in the Senate will inevitably shift again.

I saw one the other day painted neon yellow. Believe it or not, it actually seemed like an improvement.

His handling of the train derailment in Ohio was also pretty terrible, and didn't paint a very good picture of his crisis management skills.

You're right, it doesn't. But if we can transform the party into one that's focused on running younger and more progressive candidates, then the DNC at large will start to look less like a crusty party of "good old boys" and more like an actual grassroots movement of "outsiders". That's what I'd like to see for the future of the DNC and I think AOC would be a good face for that movement.

In before "But... but... Bernie..."

I really don't see anyone saying this...?

Yeah, a lot of people (myself included) feel like he was robbed of the nomination, but I haven't really seen anyone on the left advocating he run again. The great tragedy of Sanders is that we rejected him at the perfect time for his message (and at a time when the country needed him most), and now it's too late.

Of course that doesn't mean he should be ignored, it just seems like most progressives understand ee need a younger candidate with Sanders' ideals to shape the future of the party, not Sanders himself.

If Trump has taught us anything, it's that Americans have a growing appetite for "unconventional" candidates. A 40-year-old waitress from the Bronx is about as far from conventional as Trump (albeit in the opposite direction), but the more time she spends chasing Senate seats and climbing the political ladder, the more dulled that "political outsider" edge gets.

I think she should take a shot at 2028 — or at the very least, run for DNC chair next year. Someone like her directing political strategy would help younger and more progressive Democrats gain ground in local and congressional elections which could finally help shift the party back out of its corporate-sponsored neo-liberal rut and towards actual progressivism.

I’m genuinely not sure if there is a set of policies the left can offer which will adequately appeal to their entire base.

"Eat the rich" might do it.

I'd eagerly vote for this platform. Are you running?

that's why it's not that big

Bro, what do you consider big??

Conservative economist Oren Cass warns that Donald Trump could jeopardize his presidency by focusing on donor and activist agendas rather than the priorities of swing voters who secured his victory.

Jeopardize how? He's already been elected, and it's not like a Republican congress is going to impeach the head of their own party for... checks notes... focusing on donor priorities, lol

The whole reason the Republican party exists in it's current form is to rubber stamp the agenda of the ownership class. Maybe he'll get his ass kicked in the midterms in two years, but so fucking what? He's got more than enough time to trash everything before then, especially since the RS are going in with an actual plan this time.

No, the only 'jeopardy' for Trump in his second term is that the hamberders might finally catch up with him and his black, unfeeling heart explodes.

The big surprise to Democrats is that this also won over many Latino voters.

It blows my mind that anyone continues to be surprised by this. Republicans have been gaining ground with Latino voters since Bush. How much longer do we have to wait before the DNC stops scratching their heads and actually tries to do something about it?

Pretty much, yeah

Oliver Hall, a Harris campaign volunteer, found that economic concerns, particularly inflation, also drove voters to Donald Trump, despite low unemployment and wage growth touted by Democrats.

This. This right here is the issue.

According to the studies done by the Federal Reserve, only 54% of Americans have enough savings to cover 3 months of expenses. That means nearly half the country is basically living paycheck to paycheck.

Dems say wages are on the rise? So is the price of food, with some items still 50% more expensive than they were at the start of the pandemic (and now in even smaller packages to boot). Many Americans are also still stuck working a laughably low federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. Why should they care about wage hikes when they haven't gotten a raise since 2009? Meanwhile a large portion of the working class is in food service where the base rate is even lower and they have scrape by on tips — tips that are harder and harder to come by as fewer and fewer Americans are choosing to eat out.

Dems say unemployment is falling? Of course it is, when many Americans have no choice but to work multiple jobs just to make rent. And speaking of rent, it's up a average of 30% which is even higher than the supposed ~25% wage growth Dems were running on.

If someone is living hand-to-mouth, struggling to keep a roof over their head and food in their stomach, the last thing they wanna hear about is fucking GDP or employment rates or the stock market. Millions of Americans are getting screwed by the economy, and when Democrats run on a message of prosperity, that spits in the face of their lived experiences. Meanwhile Trump tells them that the system is rigged and they're getting screwed. He points the finger at all the wrong things, of course, but at least he acknowledges that things suck, even if all his proposed "solutions" are all empty demagoguery.

Stop telling working Americans how great the economy is and start telling them what they want to hear, what they know in their bones is true: The system is rigged against you. The ownership class has spent the last 3 decades gleefully stealing our wages, raping the environment, and padding the pockets of politicians so that we all stay divided and distracted. Stop running for the economy and start running against it. Run against robber barons and union busters like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. Run against the Kochs and the Waltons who've been fighting for decades to keep wages low and the keep the pockets of rich politicians full with hundreds of millions in PAC money. Run against Comcast, run against Starbucks, run against fucking Nestle.

And while you're at it, stop taking economic policy advice from capitalist assholes like Mark Cuban. Stop flaunting all your celebrity endorsements — more rich people who understand absolutely nothing about the day to day lives of working Americans. And for the love of God... please, please stop running to the right at every opportunity you get.

We need a labor party.

Let's quit pretending, that without all of the dirty money and influence from foreign countries, this idiot would have won.

I think you're wrong here, as least on the money side of things. Harris out-fundraised Trump 3 to 1, taking in almost a billion dollars this cycle. Democrats didn't lose because of dirty money — they had more than enough of their own to compete.

Kentucky also voted NO on a proposed constitutional amendment that would give the state legislator power to siphon funds from the public school system to give to private schools.

Small victory in spite of everything else, but a victory none the less

Ask yourself: Why did Donald Trump win. And think about it. The answer is right before you and blazingly far more obvious than any particular action that was within Democrats or Kamala's control.

Trump won because more people voted for him, plain and simple.

For 9 years now I've listened to fellow progressives wring their hands and breathlessly say "I just don't understand how anyone could vote for him!" The problem, the real problem is that for like 95% of us, this statement is the end of the conversation. If the democrats want to win, they need to sit down and really, really consider the "why" of the Trump voter.

Yes, there's racism and yes there's sexism and yes there's xenophobia and christian nationalism that all influence the far right, but there are also plenty of people voting R that don't give a damn about that stuff. As the dust settles, it's becoming increasingly clear that lots of voters voted split-ticket in this cycle, so blaming it all on dogma and party loyalty isn't going to cut it — in fact, the data is suggesting that Americans are less loyal than ever to any particular political party, so what is it specifically about Trump that resonated with so many this time around?

I don't have any exact answers to that question (which is honestly pretty embarrassing since we've all had 9 years to contemplate this), but if I had to guess, I'd say it's something to do with the fact Trump actively acknowledges that things suck right now. "Make America Great Again" is a slogan that inherently implies we're living in an empire in decline. Regardless of which side of the isle they sit on, I think most Americans can agree with the sentiment that things are getting worse, and have been for a while.

Of course, the two sides have wildly different ideas about why things suck — with the right largely blaming the decline on immigration or abortion or LGBT proliferation or some nebulous "eroding of traditional American values", and with the left blaming things on regulatory capture, military adventurism, and the general corporate cannibalization of all our institutions and infrastructure. But both sides lately agree we're heading in the wrong direction, so why is Trump's message more resonant?

Maybe it's because Trump presents them with more tangible "boogiemen" while the Democrats play ineffective defense by pointing at rising GDP or the surging stock market or low unemployment numbers — stats that do nothing to speak to the lived experiences of individual voters. Maybe Democrats need to focus their attention less on policy proposals and "hope and change" and more on "boogiemen" like the right. Stop campaigning against Trump, stop campaigning for incremental change, stop campaigning for culture wars, and start campaigning against people like Elon Musk. Start campaigning against union-busting Howard Shultz. Campaign against Amazon. Campaign against Mark fucking Cuban who hoards $6 billion for himself and then turns around and acts like he gives a damn about the working class while simultaneously padding the pockets of Democrats so that if they ever do actually win, he can be sure his tidy fortune won't be at risk.

Is rent too high? Is the price of groceries becoming a burden? Have wages been stagnant for two decades? Fucking acknowledge it— no, don't just acknowledge it, tell people they're right to feel that way and that they should be fucking angry about it. Then spend every last campaign dollar and stump speech and political add attacking the people who made it that way. Rally people against an actual enemy, the real enemy, and maybe we'll finally start voting for you without having to hold our noses. Of course, the DNC probably has too much vested interest in keeping their corporate donors happy to ever make this the message. After all, the Harris campaign raised nearly a billion dollars this cycle. Then again, what good is a billion bucks if it loses your the house, Senate and presidency?

Anyway, that's just the two cents of a frustrated liberal who isn't terribly surprised by the situation we're now facing once again. Take it with a grain of salt — I'm just as dumb as everyone else.

Biden should've never run again in the first place. He should have kept to his pledge of being a "one term president" and gracefully made way for the DNC to hold an open primary where the voters could've expressed there preference for an actual message, rather than being force-fed yet another campaign of "What are you going to do? Vote for Trump?"