• 3 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 6th, 2023

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  • Petty leftists weren’t even a significant part of the problem, IMO. Biden is very unpopular, people didn’t want more of the same, and Biden’s vice president looked like more of the same. However, the Democratic party was too hierarchical to nominate the sort of candidate that they needed to nominate.

    Hell, they nominated Biden himself even though his age could have given them a perfect excuse not to nominate a sitting president. He was only forced to step aside once his inadequacies were undeniably obvious to all, and even then he was like a child throwing a tantrum. History is going to remember him as the emperor with no clothes.


  • I’m not sure that the problem was going too far towards Republicans rather than not going far enough, because I expect that the leftists staying home stayed home in solidly blue states. I think that the political positions that many people here on Lemmy wanted Harris to take would have been extremely unpopular with the electorate.

    With that said, it might have been impossible for Harris to move to the right convincingly, because she couldn’t plausibly distance herself from Biden’s unpopular policies. I wish the Democrats nominated someone who could have criticized Biden in a way that Harris could not.




  • I think “freedom” resonates emotionally in different ways for different people. If you try to pass a law making it illegal to drink bleach, I will oppose that law. I certainly don’t want to drink bleach, but right now I have the freedom to drink it and you would be trying to take away that freedom. It has value to me even though I intend never to exercise it.

    Taxes, unlike drinking bleach, are a matter of trade-offs. I’m not categorically against them. However, I don’t buy into the argument that I shouldn’t oppose them as long as I will never have to pay them.




  • societies have utilized shame in order to shun unwanted or undesirable opinions forever

    Using shame isn’t new. Using shame in this particular way at this particular time appears to be a poor strategy. It’s deliberately divisive and conservative reactionaries aren’t the only ones who are motivated to vote against it. By now many people who call themselves liberal and have a history of reliably voting for Democrats oppose it too. I think Nate Silver does a good job of expressing why in the context of Israel, although he’s looking at a much bigger picture. Most of these people are still voting for Democrats, because Harris is a centrist and Trump is, well, Trump. It’s still not helping.

    Lemmy is a place where it often seems like leftist views are almost universal among Democrats, but Lemmy is not representative of the large majority of Democratic voters. I don’t think most Harris voters (as opposed to just the vocal Democrats online) despise Republicans.




  • I think the proposed approach would be perceived as defeatism. Voters would see one candidate saying “the problem is too big to solve” and the other candidate offering solutions. It doesn’t help that Democratic policy is what has been making the “problem” bigger recently.

    I also think that restricting immigration (especially illegal immigration) is not inherently fascist.


  • You simply can’t make the full case against Trump—or a compelling illustration of his fascist tendencies—without talking about immigration.

    The Democrats’ approach to immigration is genuinely unpopular, even with many people who are going to vote for Harris anyway. I think a strong case for Trump as an enemy of democracy can be made without talking about immigration, but if you (the general you) can’t do that then it’s probably better not to say anything at all unless you want to help him.




  • Most financially secure people still work full time. I suppose that in theory, they’re able to quit their jobs without suffering immediate, catastrophic consequences but if they actually did that sort of thing, they wouldn’t be financially secure for long.

    (In my experience, many financially secure people actually work much more than full time. I think they would be better off if they didn’t because at some point time becomes more valuable than money, but they have the sort of personality that compels them to. This is often related to starting out without financial security.)

    The very rich can do crazy stuff without consequences but they’re such a small part of the population that I don’t think comparing oneself to them is useful.



  • even many American Jewish people don’t like Netanyahu

    The may not like Netanyahu but they’re quite alarmed by what they see on the left side of the Democratic party. If they’re concerned that Harris will be influenced by the left, either due to personal sympathy or political considerations, then Trump does have some appeal since he’s making it quite clear that he’s definitely not like that.