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this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2024
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Leopards Ate My Face
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Chronicling political and metaphorical leopards eating the faces of the hubristic.
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Blame can be shared.
I can blame Biden for committing a crime against humanity by arming Israel, instead of doing the human thing and letting the electoral chips fall where they may. I'm not convinced it would have been the winning strategy in the election that you think it would have been, since there are a lot of voters in the US who are perfectly comfortable with killing Palestinians because they don't really understand what the nature of the conflict is, and would see any arms embargo as betrayal of Israel in their time of need after suffering a horrific attack.
I can also apportion some blame to the voters who doomed Palestine, I think irrevocably, by letting Trump get elected. They can all be responsible for what's about to unfold.
I'm definitely blaming the people who organized the "uncommitted" movement. That's different from the voters. I keep saying the first one, and you keep bringing it back to the second one. This particular example of one person who's personally responsible for pursuing and advocating a counterproductive strategy which will hurt the Palestinians, yes, I can definitely blame.
Alawieh was at least saying Trump would be worse, by the end of the campaign, but there were other co-founders who weren't even saying that, who were recommending leaving the line blank or voting for Jill Stein. Well, they got their wish! Kamala didn't win. Now, probably millions of people are going to die because of it. It's not a game.
If I have cancer, and the doctor tells me about a treatment but isn't persuasive enough about it, and I ignore them, and now I'm going to die, is that the doctor's fault?
You're holding Kamala responsible for three decades of Democrats ignoring the working class, and for Biden's policies, and for a huge amount of misinformation attacking her about the economy or whatever to people who then bought it. Okay, sure. If she had been more persuasive or had better messaging, it might have helped. That doesn't change the fact that if people had voted differently, that definitely would have helped.
This is not the case when you look at months of polling. It's a net gain of +6 points overall. If you look at just the swing states and see the margin of votes Harris needed to win, the votes from uncommitted in the primaries would have been enough to overcome that gap. Even more so when you recognize that there are over twice as many voters in the general when compared to the primaries. If you think that there is evidence that her changing position would be a net negative, back it up with evidence. Because all the evidence points to the opposite.
The US administration has been doomed Palestine, without any chance from the Democratic Party, it would have been doomed regardless. The support for the genocide is bipartisan, as evidence of Israel failing to meet the aid required put forth by the US for the last 30 days and resulting in zero policy changes.
And what does all this blame accomplish exactly? Nothing but further division by blaming minority groups for daring to advocate for representation. Those votes were completely up for grabs. The campaign decided to ignore them.
Tell that to the Democratic Party. How can you say they actually cared about winning when they ignored so many voters in critical swing states and ignored the needs of working class Americans? It certainly doesn't seem like the realized how important this election was and acted accordingly to win by any means possible.
The issue is that neither offered any treatment. One offered again the current 'treatment' that has done nothing to help your cancer, the other said that 'treatment' is bullshit and said try this snake oil instead. People are stupid, many said fuck either option, and some went for the oil not realizing it was venom. If the doctor recommended a change to a genuine treatment and warned about the dangers of the venom, it would be a very different story.
I'm holding her responsible for her campaigning and her policies. I'm holding the entire Democratic Party responsible for the continuation of neoliberalism in the face of an existential crisis where left-wing populism was the obvious solution. I'm holding both the Democratic and Republican Party responsible for being beholden to the business class, racheting the country towards Fascism.
I’m not interested in echoing our points at each other indefinitely.
I’m sure she would have gained some number of “uncommitted” voters by verbally coming out against Israel’s actions. I’m saying there are other voters she would have lost.
I keep acknowledging that Biden deserves blame for his horrible Israel policy. You keep insisting that that represents “division” and “blaming,” because I’m not willing to also assign the exact same blame to Kamala Harris, exclusively, and hold the voters completely blameless on their side.
This will be my last message on the topic, since you seem to want to keep repeating your same arguments. I just wanted to clear up those two points.
That is taken into account, it's still a significant net gain
Harris' Campaign was strongly influenced by people from the Biden and the Clinton administrations, possibly Obama admin too but I haven't heard much of that. I couldn't care less about blaming her as an individual. The campaigning and policies are still done at a party level for the most part. My point is that it's useless to blame voters, vote shaming has never accomplished anything. If the Democratic Party is genuinely democratic, then holding them accountable is a meanful avenue for change. If the Democratic Party is not genuinely democratic, and instead only beholden to donor interests, then we all have a much larger problem on our hands which is exactly why solidarity and organizing with our communities, domestic and otherwise, is so important.