Trump's latest idea has renewed Democratic criticism of pro-Palestinian activists who encouraged voters not to back Biden or Harris in the presidential election.
If the Green Party underperformed compared to past elections, absolutely. If you’re asking whether I think the Green Party getting 0% is solely a function of their policies, then obviously no, because that would require ignoring the entire way our 2-party, FPTP system works.
I’m not a fan of the Green Party precisely because I do think they have bad candidate strategies, and often look down their noses at voters just like establishment Dems like Pelosi do, when people tell them they’re losing for more reasons than just the FPTP system and Super PACs.
I’m all for people doing analysis of elections, and if you’ve seen some that indicate that GP actually functioned as a spoiler party this election, I’d be very interested to see it. I am, however, very wary of people throwing around “spoiler” as an accusation, because that’s the exact thing that establishment politicians say to excuse their ignoring 3rd party platforms rather than adapting their own platforms to capture those voters.
If enough voters want something to tank your chances at winning, and you just ignore it, that is on you, not the voters.
Blame can be shared. We can blame Biden for continuing half a century of support for genocide as long as it’s a close US ally that’s doing it. We can blame the media for creating an environment where more Americans support Israel than Palestine, in one of the most morally unambiguous situations that has ever existed on the planet. We can also blame short-sighted political operatives who were unmoved by warnings that their efforts to “help” in Gaza by advocating against Democrats in this election were going to accelerate the genocide tenfold, if they accomplished anything at all. Now that the warnings are working out precisely as envisioned, I have very little sympathy for “Arabs for Trump” or anything resembling it.
I’m actually not sure how much we can blame Harris, since she was handed a totally impossible situation where attempting to change course on Gaza would have lost her significant support from Israel-supporters, and I strongly suspect gained her pretty minimal support from Palestinian supporters. We may disagree about that. But regardless, I think the pretty reasonable claim “the Democrats have their heads up their ass as far as Gaza” is in no way a counter argument for the claim “and the uncommitted movement was, in retrospect, a big mistake.”
attempting to change course on Gaza would have lost her significant support from Israel-supporters, and I strongly suspect gained her pretty minimal support from Palestinian supporters.
this is inadvertently a perfect summation of the problem.
you’re framing “what position should Harris have taken on genocide in Gaza” entirely in terms of would it have gained or lost her voters.
a 1938 poll asked people in the US if they supported allowing more European Jews to move to the US. 71% said no. advance that page by two slides, a 1942 poll found 93% of Americans supported internment of Japanese immigrants, and 59% supported internment of American citizens with Japanese ancestry.
opposition to genocide…is sometimes politically unpopular.
have you seen the first episode of Black Mirror, the one where the British PM gets blackmailed into fucking a pig? there’s a somewhat-minor plot point in it, that I think got overshadowed by the rest of it. the PM is getting the results of real-time polls on Twitter, and based on the poll results he’s constantly flip-flopping about whether or not he’ll fuck the pig.
Republicans have principles. they’re all bad principles, to be sure, but there are things they consistently believe in. Democrats have no principles. they’ll campaign on anything they think will get them votes.
Biden took the biggest action on climate change ten times over, and reduced income inequality for the first time in I have no idea how long. Neither of them were even close to being enough to fully reverse 50 years of fuckery, or even make much more than a sizeable dent in the problem, but they were big swings at pretty much the two biggest problems in America today, which came with quite a bit of success starting from a near-apocalyptic position. Because the media and the Democratic campaign apparatus are equally total shit, no one knows that either of those things happened. Biden focused a lot more on getting them done than on publicizing them, or working on much more visible problems like the price of eggs.
If you ask certain people, they will tell you something along the lines of “well, I didn’t hear about that, and it’s the Democrats’ job to earn my vote.”
I agree with pretty much everything you said, and I also do not primarily blame Harris. If you look at my post and comment history, you’ll see that I was backing her since the second Biden dropped.
She did make missteps wrt Gaza, but I think in retrospect it was probably too late for her by then anyways, given how long Biden stayed in, and how much damage he did.
The uncommitted movement was during state primaries, it wasn’t supposed to be during the general as well. I think that it was coopted (or at least boosted) later on by right-wingers and Zionists to expressely hurt Dems, rather than just oppose their stance on Gaza.
At an individual level, I don’t blame anyone who is Arab and could not bring themselves to vote for the party who was, even during the election, supplying weapons to kill their fellow countrymen and neighbors. I have a friend who is Palestinian, and he told me that he saw a clip in the background of a report on the “war” on CNN of a building being bombed, and it was an apartment building where one of his friends used to live. Just casually being demo’d on TV.
Now, Arabs voting for Trump is another matter entirely, and there is and never was any excuse for that.
Yeah. I pretty much agree with 100% of what you just said and I’ve been echoing some of the particulars of it for the last couple of days (in particular, as much as I think “uncommitted” after the primary was a mistake, I get it). I’ve also had that experience of watching TV with someone who was watching homes get destroyed in a place that they knew personally. It’s not a great experience.
If the Green Party underperformed compared to past elections, absolutely. If you’re asking whether I think the Green Party getting 0% is solely a function of their policies, then obviously no, because that would require ignoring the entire way our 2-party, FPTP system works.
I’m not a fan of the Green Party precisely because I do think they have bad candidate strategies, and often look down their noses at voters just like establishment Dems like Pelosi do, when people tell them they’re losing for more reasons than just the FPTP system and Super PACs.
I’m all for people doing analysis of elections, and if you’ve seen some that indicate that GP actually functioned as a spoiler party this election, I’d be very interested to see it. I am, however, very wary of people throwing around “spoiler” as an accusation, because that’s the exact thing that establishment politicians say to excuse their ignoring 3rd party platforms rather than adapting their own platforms to capture those voters.
If enough voters want something to tank your chances at winning, and you just ignore it, that is on you, not the voters.
Interesting.
Blame can be shared. We can blame Biden for continuing half a century of support for genocide as long as it’s a close US ally that’s doing it. We can blame the media for creating an environment where more Americans support Israel than Palestine, in one of the most morally unambiguous situations that has ever existed on the planet. We can also blame short-sighted political operatives who were unmoved by warnings that their efforts to “help” in Gaza by advocating against Democrats in this election were going to accelerate the genocide tenfold, if they accomplished anything at all. Now that the warnings are working out precisely as envisioned, I have very little sympathy for “Arabs for Trump” or anything resembling it.
I’m actually not sure how much we can blame Harris, since she was handed a totally impossible situation where attempting to change course on Gaza would have lost her significant support from Israel-supporters, and I strongly suspect gained her pretty minimal support from Palestinian supporters. We may disagree about that. But regardless, I think the pretty reasonable claim “the Democrats have their heads up their ass as far as Gaza” is in no way a counter argument for the claim “and the uncommitted movement was, in retrospect, a big mistake.”
this is inadvertently a perfect summation of the problem.
you’re framing “what position should Harris have taken on genocide in Gaza” entirely in terms of would it have gained or lost her voters.
a 1938 poll asked people in the US if they supported allowing more European Jews to move to the US. 71% said no. advance that page by two slides, a 1942 poll found 93% of Americans supported internment of Japanese immigrants, and 59% supported internment of American citizens with Japanese ancestry.
opposition to genocide…is sometimes politically unpopular.
have you seen the first episode of Black Mirror, the one where the British PM gets blackmailed into fucking a pig? there’s a somewhat-minor plot point in it, that I think got overshadowed by the rest of it. the PM is getting the results of real-time polls on Twitter, and based on the poll results he’s constantly flip-flopping about whether or not he’ll fuck the pig.
Republicans have principles. they’re all bad principles, to be sure, but there are things they consistently believe in. Democrats have no principles. they’ll campaign on anything they think will get them votes.
Republicans are anti-abortion. Democrats are pro-choice…except when they campaign for anti-abortion Democrats
Republicans are anti-immigrant. Democrats are pro-immigrant…except when they try to campaign on “border security” out of a misplaced belief that they’ll win over “moderate” xenophobes"
Republicans are in favor of big business fucking over regular people. Democrats defend regular people…except when someone like FTC Chair Lina Khan goes after businesses connected with Democratic party donors
Biden took the biggest action on climate change ten times over, and reduced income inequality for the first time in I have no idea how long. Neither of them were even close to being enough to fully reverse 50 years of fuckery, or even make much more than a sizeable dent in the problem, but they were big swings at pretty much the two biggest problems in America today, which came with quite a bit of success starting from a near-apocalyptic position. Because the media and the Democratic campaign apparatus are equally total shit, no one knows that either of those things happened. Biden focused a lot more on getting them done than on publicizing them, or working on much more visible problems like the price of eggs.
If you ask certain people, they will tell you something along the lines of “well, I didn’t hear about that, and it’s the Democrats’ job to earn my vote.”
I agree with pretty much everything you said, and I also do not primarily blame Harris. If you look at my post and comment history, you’ll see that I was backing her since the second Biden dropped.
She did make missteps wrt Gaza, but I think in retrospect it was probably too late for her by then anyways, given how long Biden stayed in, and how much damage he did.
The uncommitted movement was during state primaries, it wasn’t supposed to be during the general as well. I think that it was coopted (or at least boosted) later on by right-wingers and Zionists to expressely hurt Dems, rather than just oppose their stance on Gaza.
At an individual level, I don’t blame anyone who is Arab and could not bring themselves to vote for the party who was, even during the election, supplying weapons to kill their fellow countrymen and neighbors. I have a friend who is Palestinian, and he told me that he saw a clip in the background of a report on the “war” on CNN of a building being bombed, and it was an apartment building where one of his friends used to live. Just casually being demo’d on TV.
Now, Arabs voting for Trump is another matter entirely, and there is and never was any excuse for that.
Yeah. I pretty much agree with 100% of what you just said and I’ve been echoing some of the particulars of it for the last couple of days (in particular, as much as I think “uncommitted” after the primary was a mistake, I get it). I’ve also had that experience of watching TV with someone who was watching homes get destroyed in a place that they knew personally. It’s not a great experience.