petrol_sniff_king

Gah, a 4-day work week would be wonderful. I might actually work on my side projects.

I'm not abdicating racism or sexism as part of the problem. But if you're just going to capitulate to it, god, we may as well run 20 more white men. I think that if America is capable of electing Obama on the promise of hope and change, they can elect Kamala.

If the DNC is going to put up a candidate that must deal with racism and sexism, wouldn't the message be like ten times as important? But what was there?

"What would you do differently than Biden?"
"Hm, nothing really comes to mind."

People didn't like Biden, so how was this meant to inspire anyone? I don't reckon many people actually saw that specific interview, but this is the attitude the DNC gives us every. single. time. It's always scraps and morsels.

You realize, if those 10 million people had come out for Kamala and we had beaten Trump just barely, I'm still not satisfied with that. What I thought we had on election night was a coin flip, not the blowout that happened. A coin flip. Against a fascist.

Part of the reason that people don't believe much happened under Trump is that the DNC is terrible about telling them.

What motivates the right? Non-stop, 24-7, talk news radio propaganda about how badly the woke democrats are fucking everything up, about how your son is gay because of flouride in your water.

What motivates the left?

I mean that, sincerely. It can't be our sense of righteous civic duty; as you just said, people don't care. We don't have a story. Biden passed the Stop Inflation Act? Okay. What even is that?

You should ask those same people, I'm not saying it'll be every single one of them, but ask them if they liked Bernie Sanders. It's not impossible to reach these people, most of them anyway, they just need something to latch on to.

I hate to break it to you, man, but most people barely care about politics at all. Politics is that annoying thing they have to deal with once every Thanksgiving when uncle Remus won't shut up about the border.

It would be really nice if they did care, but they don't. You either work around this problem, or you lose indefinitely.

But we need an answer. Not from you specifically, of course, but we die if we don't.

Think about this for a moment:

knowing it was a de-facto vote for Trump.

Did they? Like, have you spoken to them? Your average voter is not even half as politically plugged in as you or I am.

Getting people to begrudgingly vote for someone they don't believe represents any fundamental change to the problems they're dealing with is, unfortunately, just not that exciting. And if you don't have excitement, how do you get the message to spread? If someone isn't excited about cleaning up their dirty city, are you really surprised it never happens?

If you're refusing to pick fights with republicans, refusing to point out their obstructionism to the good you're working for, refusing to acknowledge any of the problems people have had with your previous candidates---I can shit talk Obama and Bill Clinton, but the DNC is not capable of it, which might even explain why they're so quiet about Trump's connections to Epstein; then how can you represent anything new?

Tim Walz's Weird campaign was a massive step in the right direction, there was energy then, and the DNC muzzled him as soon as they were able to. How can you be excited about the fight against republicans when DNC leadership are barely excited about it themselves?

I'm sorry for the rant, I really didn't mean to write a wall of text. I'm just saying, it's true that our people should have taken their medicine, they should have voted, but the reason so many didn't has to be systemic. It's not because they wanted Trump; if they did, they would have gone and voted for him. There is a rot at the heart of our current efforts that needs to be cut out before it consumes us completely.

They are just as guilty as the Trump voters.

This is not untrue, but it's also not a meaningful path forward.

Is it really that 15 million uninspired people are "okay with racism"? Even if we take that at face value, okay? How do we inspire them, then? Losing is not an option for us.

Simmer down, bronco.

It's just useful terminology. It comes up when it comes up.

I don't spend much time calling my girl friends trans-her, if that's what you're asking.

Oh, eugenics, that's cool.

Hell yeah. I got nothing else to say, I'm just really impressed.

Ayy, how apt.

I think our hope following this moment is obstructionism. In congress or by blue state governors or otherwise.

I'll be around for the next election if one happens, but I would suggest coming up with a plan B.