Best I could do without a definition for the stupid use of “leftist extremists” with no definition. My point is, there is zero evidence to blame this election on leftists of any stripe.

You have data to back that up I assume?

Biden had polling in his hands that said Trump would get 400 electoral votes against him on the day he decided to run for a second term. Then he held on just long enough to make certain we would have no primary and be stuck with a candidate who couldn’t shake the stink of his presidency.

Harris lost the popular vote by over 4-million votes. There aren’t that many “leftist extremists” in the whole damn country, and only a small subset of those wouldn’t have voted for Harris.

The vast bulk of those who stayed home were left leaning apolitical normies. Most of the country fits in that group.

Maybe they both die and we get Mike Johnson!

The sad part is that that also describes what the Democrats did to get us into this mess.

It’s certainly not obvious to many within the Democratic establishment sphere. historic_flawlessly_run_campaign

Exactly what it should look like next time is hard to say because it will to a large extent depend on the candidate and what issues have the public’s attention. There certainly should be a lot more engagement with independent media. Progressives had an early lead in that area, but that was mostly quashed by a coalition of Republicans and Democrats threatening regulation to get social media companies to dis-empower independent news in favor of corporate controlled sources. Republicans then spent a fortune promoting right wing channels while Democrats did nothing. This goes to the root issue that Republicans seek out engagement with their base, while Democrats avoid it as much as possible.

Another thing would be for Democrats to drop messaging with technocratic measures that don’t sync up with how voters feel about the economy. While the economy is technically in good shape, a lot of voters in any economy will be suffering. The message received becomes “we don’t plan to change our approach regardless of how the economy is working for you.” When interest rates skyrocket, the impact doesn’t go away once they are back under control. When inflation skyrocketed, Democrats tried to minimize the issue when they should have mirrored the outrage and focused on how Trump policies created it.

In the big picture, Democrats need to get serious about going after wealth inequality. This improved somewhat with Biden, but Biden was incapable of selling it, and Harris barely tried. She let Trump take the lead on working class economics and had to chase the “no tax on tips” and “no tax on Social Security”. Playing catch-up just made her look insincere. (Yes, ironic given Trump)

The American middle class has been under siege for decades, and they know it. It’s human nature that they need someone to blame. Republicans hand them immigrants, LGBTQ+ and DEI. Democrats step in on the defense, but they offer no competing villain. They could tell the truth and show how corporate money and Billionaires have bought legislation to give themselves an advantage over consumers, but Democrats don’t want to do that (for reasons you can speculate on). Democrats won’t even go after clear cases of Republican corruption with any level of conviction.

The town hall meeting Bernie did on Fox was a great example of how Democrats can reach a right wing audience with left wing rhetoric. Running to the center never works, but speaking to their struggles and frustration in a real way can.

It’s not like progressives haven’t been shouting the answer to this for the past 20 years, but here it is again from an apparently recent convert from within the Democratic establishment camp.

Voters to Elites: Do You See Me Now?

What it doesn’t look like is campaigning with Liz Cheney. It doesn’t look like sending Bill Clinton to Michigan to lecture Muslims on how important it is to fund Israel’s genocide. It doesn’t look like Biden’s garbage gaff. It sure as hell doesn’t look like Harris having no answer to the question of how she would break with the Biden administration. All of these failures might have been irrelevant were it not for 50 years of Democrats looking down their nose at working Americans. A lot of it is policy, but a lot is just a failure of messaging.

That’s good advice no matter what the political situation is. However, it’s pretty irrelevant in facing a Trump presidency. It does nothing for economic turmoil, crumbling infrastructure, etc. It’s also irrelevant to facing down federal or state force. If the cops want into your house and have legal cover, you aren’t going to stop them by force of arms.

Organize my community to do what? Refocus on what? Revolution?

Until the next election is cancelled, I plan on trying to win it. That means understanding how the Democrats failed.

And what useful action does this information enable us to take? Next election, should we nominate better voters?

We have the voters we have. We need Democrats that can reach those voters. Blaming them wins us nothing.

This is awesome. You just absolutely nailed the exact cause. Now all we have to do is what? Eliminate the voters? That sounds like the Republican plan to me.

Or maybe your plan is to convince the voters to do otherwise? Don’t you think the politicians have a tiny little bit of responsibility in that area?

Neoliberalism leads to fascism via a well understood pattern that’s currently repeating all around the globe. If you want better voters, then you need better Democrats.

You aren’t looking for solutions, you’re looking for someone to blame. Quit bitching and start working towards something better, or you’re as useless as the Democratic establishment.

Jumping the gun a bit on that post mortum analysis? Put up the data or shut the fuck up you wanker. This is 100% an establishment fuck up, and you are as cognitively twisted as any MAGA freak.

Despite the obvious common root in “populism” and “popular”, I don’t think that’s a fair “nutshell” description of populism at all.

The central core of populism is opposition to an elite ruling class. Right wing populism tends to attack education and expertise which does fit loosely with your description, but left wing populism is more focused on wealthy elites. Wealth has always been a terrible proxy for merit or the ability to rule.

To be against populism you either have to disagree that we are largely ruled by a class of elites, or think that being ruled by elites is not a bad thing. Anyone that thinks elites are not in control of the economy and political system in the US is borderline delusional. Anyone who thinks the elites got there by merit need to learn a lot more about figures like Elon Musk, Trump, or the Clintons.

Unfortunately the Democrats need slightly more than a bare majority because some Democrats might as well be Republicans.

Kamala has also stated her support for exempting this legislation from the filibuster, something Biden didn’t do. She wouldn’t technically have the power herself, but might get Senate Democrats on board.

Virginia isn’t really in play, and the number of votes in question won’t change that. I’ve got a bad feeling that this ruling was intended to serve a larger purpose than is immediately obvious. Perhaps a signal to state courts in other states? There is another shoe.

Possession is irrelevant too. Access to source code has not being restricted, and doing so wouldn’t even be realistically possible. The only practical change is that new updates from these developers will not be published by the Linux Foundation, and ongoing integration will not be done by mainline Linux developers.

If Russia wants, they can fork Linux at any time, call it Rusinux, and do whatever they want with it. They could even port future Linux updates back to their kernel. They still have to keep it under the GPL2 license, but only if they want to honor Western copyright laws and treaties.

Sure, if words are meaningless.

Democrats like Kamala. She is hardly a departure from the Democratic establishment brand.

Who owns the copyright is irrelevant. Russian developers are still entirely entitled to use and modify the Linux source. The only thing they can’t do is submit their changes for inclusion in the main Linux development tree. The only real consequence for them is that their changes might be broken by future kernel updates and they will have to fix it themselves to use newer kernels. That, and they will have to maintain their own distribution system. I’ve also seen nothing to suggest anyone’s code is being removed.

The US didn’t invade Ukraine and, obviously, isn’t under US or European sanctions. I’m sure that you and I could agree on a great deal when it comes to American foreign policy, it’s just not relevant to this situation where Russia is the clear aggressor. (Setting aside the usual “buffer zone” bullshit that every aggressor state uses and Putin already abandoned).

Me too. I’ve had a sinus headache for over 10 years straight. I don’t even remember what it’s like to not be congested. Three surgeries and more drugs than I ever knew existed have done nothing. Good health is definitely underappreciated.

I don’t share the same read on that comment, but it appears you are more reasonable than I gave you credit for. Thank you for your door to door work for the cause.