It is a party issue. The reason Democrats couldn’t effectively run on the issue of democracy is that they THEMSELVES did not treat Trump as a threat to democracy. Actions speak louder than words. Democrats called Trump a fascist and a threat to democracy. But they didn’t even start an investigation of him til two years into the Biden term. That man should have been arrested day one, hauled in front of a military tribunal, charged with treason, and dealt with accordingly. Any SCOTUS justices that tried to prevent this should have been charged as accessories after the fact and similarly tried as enemies of the republic.

THAT is the rational response to a former president that tried to overthrow the government. Trump should have been six feet under before Biden finished his first 100 days. That is the kind of urgency that is needed when a true existential threat is present. Look what happens when a random citizen tries to walk into the White House carrying a rifle. Do you think they weigh the political calculus of dealing with the person and how to respond to them without angering voters? No, they do what is necessary, then and there. That is what you do in an emergency.

What kind of existential threat do you just ignore for two years and then slow-walk? If China were invading Hawaii, would we move with that kind of sloth? No, an existential threat requires immediate action. By giving so much deference to Trump, Biden made extremely clear that he didn’t believe Trump to be an existential threat to democracy. Entirely because of his actions, any later campaign pleas about the threat of Trump fell of deaf ears. If the president of the United States won’t take something seriously as a threat to democracy, why would anyone expect voters to?

I don’t know. I voted for Kamala, but I think Trump might actually be better long-term for the Palestinians than Kamala.

Yes, Trump would happily watch as Israel bulldozed and annexed the entirety of Gaza and the West Bank. But Israel’s ability to do that isn’t contingent on US military aid. What really prevents that is broader global public opinion. If Israel tries a full and rapid ethnic cleansing, it will be completely embargoed by every nation in Europe.

There is a reason Israel has been doing a slow-mo “genocide by zoning code” in the West Bank for years. They know they can’t get away with overt genocide, not without facing mass trade embargoes.

The truth is, I really don’t know if things can realistically get bad enough in Palestine for the Kamala/Trump distinction to be any different. Even in the case of an overt genocide, Kamala would simply withdraw some offensive aid. Trump would keep that aid flowing, but in either case, if Israel decided to do a full overt genocide of the Palestinians, neither a Trump nor Harris administration would meaningfully intervene.

The only long-term hope for any improvement for US policy on Israel is if Democrat leaders listen to their base and stop supporting them. Kamala was going to be fully pro-Israel. And with Kamala as an incumbent, no anti-Zionist candidate would have been able to run in 2028. Now with Kamala out of the picture, and with her seeming loss due to her and Biden’s addiction to fellating Israel, there is room politically for anti-genocide voices to actually have a chance at a major party’s nomination.

I would say the chances of an anti-genocide president being in office in 2029 are about 10-20%. With a Harris win, that chance would be 0%.

OTOH, I can see it from the other perspective.

I voted for Kamala, but I also recognize that NOT VOTING for Kamala is probably the fastest way to get any change in US Israel policy.

If Kamala won, nothing was going to change in Gaza. The current slow genocide would continue unabated with full US financial support.

Trump won. There is now a chance that the genocide will accelerate. However, there are strong reasons to believe this will not be the case. Israel has always had to balance its genocidal territorial ambitions with global public opinion. Trump will not stop Netanyahu from bulldozing the West Bank, but the threat of embargo from every nation in Europe might. Israel can only go far without risking its existentially necessary trade links. As nice as US aid is to have, this broader international trade is Israel’s real life-blood.

So while there is a chance of acceleration, the chance is not particularly large. In reality, the ultimate outcome of Trump and Harris administrations is likely identical in terms of Gaza.

On the other hand, a Kamala loss does present the one narrow window for possible change on US Israeli policy. Kamala chose Israel over winning the election. She gave up her presidency for Netanyahu. She betrayed her own base, and she towed the Israeli line, and what did it get her? She was still portrayed as the enemy of Israel and lost anyway.

That lesson will be remembered by future Democratic candidates. And that lesson is that cowing to Israel does not guarantee victory. And that is really the only realistic path forward we have right now to any change in US Israeli policy. It’s going to require that Democrats get their heads out of their asses and realize that Israel is not such a winning issue anymore. THAT is what is required for real change. And hopefully, with Kamala’s loss, at least some progress can be made on Democrat’s chronic case of Israel fellatio.

I dunno. I find the word “decadence” ridiculous. It’s flexible to the point of uselessness. People refer to the “decadence” of the Romans to mean everything from their extreme wealth gap to the decline of citizens soldiers. Hell, half the time people use “decadence” just as a way of disguising that they’re simply blaming the fall of Rome in the existence of gay people.

That’s a clear bad-faith interpretation of what I posted. Try improving your reading comprehension skills.

And look where that type of thinking has got us. Democrats don’t run on any meaningful bold policy positions, as there’s always some needling centrist saying why this or that will never be politically viable.

Trump doesn’t run this way. Deporting 20 million people has all sorts of practical, legal, fiscal, and political issues with it. No rational or sane professional political consultant would say that it’s a winning strategy. Yet, time and time again, Trump proves that things that all the political consultants and experts would be political suicide, are in fact anything but.

Democrats give up before the fight even begins. They accept Republican framing and Republican ideas on what is politically possible. They run as Republican-lite, and they lose again and again because of this.

And their centrist wing managed to completely kneecap it. The same centrist wing that ran Kamala’s campaign.

How has US fossil fuel production been cut back AT ALL from any Biden or Harris policy?

Yes, I know you can blame it on Manchin. The problem is that there’s always a Manchin. The Democrats take turns being the sacrificial lamb, and they can always find some conservative Dem to kneecap any serious Democratic proposal.

Voters don’t give two shits about what your party introduces. Parties introduce all sorts of policies they have zero intention of passing for easy political points all the time.

This study from 2014 really explains this election for me.

For the bottom 90% of the US population, democracy fundamentally does not exist. The actions of legislators reflect the opinions of the wealthiest 10% of the population.

“Democracy,” for 90% of the population, is a complete sham. Since 2016, Democrats SHOULD have been taking a hard left turn towards progressive populism. They should have been pursuing policies that are actually popular among the common people, even if those are unpopular among their wealthy donors. But while they ran on the idea of democracy, Democrats have done NOTHING to make their party actually reflect the needs of regular people. They should have been offering a bold vision to help the American people. But the DNC decided that the whims of donors was more important, and they lost as a result.

Why would you expect people to care for a democracy that means nothing to them?

I voted for Harris, but I also realize that this “They took the pistol out of the person’s hand that was pointed at them and replaced it with a bazooka” is a seriously poor description of Israel and the Gaza conflict in regards to Harris and Trump.

Harris didn’t really offer anything substantially better for Palestine than Trump did. Yes, Trump personally wouldn’t mind it if Israel just completely bulldozed the entire West Bank and Gaza tomorrow and annexed the whole thing. Harris wouldn’t support that. But the real barrier to that kind of full-on ethnic cleansing is not US military support. Even with full US backing, Israel can’t do that kind of full-on ethnic cleansing without becoming subject to complete trade embargoes by every country in Europe.

Israel has been physically capable of completely annexing the West Bank and Gaza for decades. They’ve taken the slow approach to ethnic cleansing - slowly taking territory via zoning building permits - precisely because they need to balance their territorial ambitions with their need for trade with other nations. This is what ultimately restrains them from their worst possible crimes.

Neither Trump nor Kamala would have used US military aid to rein in Israel. Neither would use US military forces to prevent an all-out genocide attempt by Israel. Trump wouldn’t oppose an overt Israeli genocide against the Palestinians. But if Israel gets to that point, then they’re not going to be thinking about US military aid at that point.

As a practical matter, Trump vs Kamala is a wash for the Palestinians.

• Completely adopting the right-wing framing on immigration. Ended up running in favor of the most right-wing and damaging immigration bill. (She adopted it because Trump rejected the bill because he wanted to run on it.)

• Signing on to continue Trump’s stupid border wall.

• Adopting a policy on Gaza that was as favorable to Israel as any official policy of the Republicans.

• Not challenging state-level laws against trans people, largely taking a state’s right position on the matter.

• Seeking out and running on endorsements from Dick Cheney and other prominent Republicans.

• Embracing fracking when fracking isn’t even supported by a majority of Pennsylvanians.

• Completely abandoning medicare for all, not even making the public option a major part of her campaign.

That is NOT the status quo. You’re talking about someone promising to make utterly massive changes to US foreign and domestic policy. People are hurting for change, and if they can’t find that change on the left, they’ll find it on the right.

Trump is campaigning on making massive changes to American domestic and foreign policy. I don’t like the changes he’s pursuing, but he is absolutely not running on the status quo. And that is, in fact, exactly what won him the race.

If he was just running on the status quo, he wouldn’t be a threat to democracy. Deporting 20 million people isn’t the status quo. Repealing civil rights isn’t status quo. Attacking or ending NATO isn’t status quo. Abandoning Ukraine isn’t status quo. Befriending Russia isn’t status quo.

Yes, Trump is a conservative white guy. But type of thinking, focusing on identity groups and demographics, is what has got us here. Kamala herself is a historically novel nominee, she was new in terms of personal identity. But she wasn’t actually offering anything other than the same milquetoast centrism of Biden.

This is the problem. People are hurting. Trump actually had something to offer these people. He said, “elect me, I’ll throw out all the immigrants, and by doing so I’ll lower the cost of housing and increase wages!” It’s a horrible, evil, and long-term unproductive solution, but he was actually offering SOMETHING. Democrats offered no meaningful answers to the things people are actually hurting on. The only thing Democrats offered were wonky dismissals of economic concerns by citing official inflation numbers and calculated real wage gains. (Ignoring figures like ratio of median housing cost to median wage.)

People are in pain right now. People are on the edge, driven to the brink by late-stage capitalism. Biden was a milquetoast centrist, but he was able to barely eek out a win by running on a lot of progressive promises in 2020. He walked away from a lot of those commitments and governed as the centrist he is. Harris offered just more of the same. Neither offered real meaningful solutions and proved completely incapable of handling the crises at hand.

Trump again, he actually offered solutions, or at least something that seems like a solution. Like it or not, he WAS the change candidate of 2020. And that is what won him the election.

He really, really isn’t.

Lesser of evils is a losing strategy because soon enough you’re asking people to choose the lesser evil between Hilter and Mussolini.

Spinning is better than not spinning.

Previously, on January 6th, Trump actively prevented troops from being deployed to the Capital grounds. Congress specifically asked for troops to be deployed, but he refused. Despite the advanced warning that violence was expected, the Capital was guarded by just a handful of regular police officers. The forces present are the normal type, the Capital police officers who normally handle things like protesters who chain themselves up outside a Senator’s office. That’s the level of threat they’re used to handling.

The proper way to deal with armed insurrectionists trying to literally overthrow a government is actual troops, real soldiers. And that is what will be used this time. The Capital will be a fortress guarded by thousands of trained service members, with orders to shoot to kill anyone attempting to break in. If MAGA tries anything this time, they’ll be met with automatic weapons fire. In other words, they’ll get the kind of treatment the SHOULD have received on January 6th last time.

Biden being in office and holding command of the military during this time is not something that should be so casually dismissed.

This considers only party registration. Harris seems to be pulling in a substantial number of Republicans - an amount far, far greater than the number of Democrats voting for Trump.

And yet, without such people, these institutions will never change. If you want these institutions to be non-hateful, you have to get non-hateful people into them. We’re not going to get rid of Liberty University any time soon. And I would prefer to see it grow into a non-bigoted institution than to have it remain a bigoted institution indefinitely.

Sometimes you just have to work at places that are hostile to trans people, and you just have to hope they don’t find out you’re trans. If the only place that you can find a job in your field is at a Christian College, maybe you’ll accept the job and hope for the best. Potentially losing a job at some point in the future is better than not having a job today.

I was going to say they should send her down to hold get out the vote rallies in Puerto Rico.