this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2025
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So sick of the division amongst the left. He is far from perfect, but I'd much rather take a neoliberal over a fascist.
With all due respect, as I understand where this sentiment comes from, that is how Trump gained momentum and won.
I think the blue no matter who approach has failed more than worked considering Hillary failed, Biden did win but really it was more Trump lost, Kamala lost (she got a shit deal yeah but still neolib vs unchained Trump should have been a no contest) and going further back Gore and Kerry lost to Bush. Clinton basically was the centrist Republican neolib that got Dems a roadmap that they keep to this day.
The time for half measures is over and the DNC needs to adapt or they will end up like the Whig Party. If you dont believe me look at their approval right now, No one likes the Democrats
Newsom is an establishment figure and telling the next generation of voters this is going to be a candidate for change won't yield the results you think.
Trump gained momentum and won because the people in this country don't know their ass from their elbow in terms of what is happening, and their whole picture of politics is based on confusion and incredibly effective weaponized propaganda.
You presented a child with a pretty unappealing fast food burger that had gone cold anyway, and a big lump of shit laced with (and labeled as) rat poison, and then he selected the shit and ate the whole thing. And your reaction is, "Well the burger should have been better." I mean, it's not at all an incorrect statement. But I feel like the way it played out should be automatic proof that the burger quality wasn't the core of the issue.
A cold fast food burger would have been miles ahead of what we were offered. Democrats wouldn't even say "Genocide is bad, and we shouldn't support it". They continuously gaslight Americans on the economy. They support the bombing of kids, and torture programs. They expand out the Republican's surveillance programs.
It's not a choice of a burger vs shit, it's a vomit vs shit
I think a big issue is that money and religion have deep ties in the US. Taking a hard stance against Israel at that point in time would cost votes in purple states; it was the right thing to do, but it would have lost votes. Given there are full on pacs that track each candidate on how much they openly support Israel I have no doubt they would have used money and influence to push them on it.
I think the issues with the economy were that it was still rocked by Covid and the after effects of it. Not having enough votes in the Senate meant nothing could get passed to help the people. Having the Supreme Court stacked by Republicans meant that even student loan forgiveness was shot down.
Really it’s more like a burger that covered in crap. If we want the burger remade to taste right then Democrats needed to win big in 2024. The opposite happened. Democrats lost House seats, Senate seats, and the Presidency. Any positive change now pretty much requires big wins now in 2026 and 2028 to be big wins for the Democratic Party.
For some perspective on how bad the losses for us were: if Democrats won a big trifecta in 2024, we could have uncapped the House, expanded the Supreme Court and set term limits, done away with the Filibuster to get important legislation passed, and even implemented legislation to tackle Gerrymandering across the nation. Just the uncapped House bit would have made it so elections are won by the Popular Vote.
Yet there seemed enough votes to spend more money on foreign wars, and bailing out their rich friends. There also seemed to be enough political capital to take away the highly popular covid-benefits.
That's why he took that route: So that he could look like the good guy, while not actually fixing the problem.
Only if you think there is nutritional value in the Dems. I sure don't see any.
Why would you expect any of that to happen? They've had the chance to fix these things in the past, and chose not to.
You’re right, as there is always funding available when it comes to international conflicts that relate to US interests, especially when certain Congress members districts make money hand over fist from those deals.
2020 is a prime example of Republicans bailing out their rich friends since they demanded that there be zero oversight for the several trillions of dollars going out to stimulate businesses.
The public is the least likely to get any assistance if there is not a Democratic trifecta, since Republicans notoriously will not cross party lines if it means giving Democrats a “win”. Because Democrats did not have big enough majorities in 2021, they were unable to secure additional Covid aid for people. Namely, having Sinema and Manchin, who are both Independents, did not help as they both refused to join with Democrats on bringing more aid. Meaning it was 48 D - 52 R in the Senate. This gridlocked meaningful legislation from passing.
They tried to pass regularly in the House and Senate, but they didn’t have the votes because Republicans voted against it and Independents like Manchin voted against it. That vote was 49 D - 50 R in the Senate.
So Biden was trying any way he could to get it passed. Biden actually did manage to get some student loan forgiveness passed, but not the mass amount that was hoped for because of the conservative Supreme Court.
I see that there is some value because they are trying to vote in policies that would actually help people, but they lack the votes to actually pass these things. I don’t see that as a fault of the legislators so much as an issue of us previously having given land so much more power than people in this country. When small states like Wyoming have as many Senators as big states like New York or California we end up in these situations where your voice matters more based on where you live.
I do see the Democratic Party itself slowly becoming more progressive as well as with the new influx in voters generally being more progressive than their parents or grandparents. Establishment Democrats are trying to push back against the progressives, since they see it as a threat to their seats, but frankly many of those politicians deserve to lose their seats for being actual do nothings.
Mostly because the circumstances have changed. There used to be more buddy, buddy-ness in Congress, it wasn’t so hyper-partisan or was not visible to the old guard Democrats in Congress. Any guise of playing by the rules disappeared when Republicans broke their own made up rule to let a Supreme Court justice be added to the bench during an election year.
They didn’t have the votes to change many of those things in the past, and up until more of the early-2010s Democrats were still doing Gerrymandering themselves at times.
Agreed. That's why Biden spent his time helping out his military friends, and bombing the shit out of innocent people, instead of helping American voters.
Agreed, and Biden's bailouts were another prime example of the Democrats helping their rich friends too.
Well, that was the excuse they used:
They should have tried negotiating, but couldn't be bothered to. They were busy helping out their friends. Biden also could have extended the covid relief, but chose not to.
Except for all the ways that would have actually worked. He could have just sent out the money, like he did with Israel. But he slow-rolled it, and sent it to the Supreme Court so they could shoot it down, and he could look like the good guy, without actually doing anything
No, they had plenty of votes, but chose to pretend that they were powerless so that they didn't have to do anything. Once again, it was clear that they could get shit done when it came to bombing kids, and helping out their rich friends, but couldn't seem to muster up the energy when it came to the voters.
lolwut? The same party that campaigned with the Cheneys? that said they would keep bombing people oversees? That said they wanted more border controls, and are already backing down on support for LGBTQ+ people?
Yes they did. They just didn't care because it wasn't what their donors wanted.
I would say the citizens that experienced the fall out from NAFTA that gutted blue collar jobs and created the rust belt would say "the big lump of shit with rat poison" was the Democrats that threw the working class overboard years ago.
Speaking of poison, it is the same reason residents of Michigan would rather vote Trump because the Democratic party and Obama would rather gaslight them about their water being safe to drink instead of charging the corporations that cut costs that polluted the water with federal charges. Obama also bailed out Wall Street and left hard working Americans with a shell of an American dream.
The core of the issue is the Democrats use to be for the everyday man and they lost their way and eroded trust, that will never be gained back. What that leaves voters in fly over states with is a choice to vote their better interest or have a candidate that "tells it like it is" aka lie and get back at the party that screwed them over.
It's not as black and white when you're in the thick of it, as difficult as it is to reason with that base.
The greatest trick the devil pulled was convincing people he didn't exist. The greatest trick the Republican party pulled was convincing people that its most unpopular ideas are entirely Democrats' fault.
NAFTA was championed by, majority supported, and voted in by mostly Republicans. It was ultimately bipartisan, but Democrats were significantly more opposed to it than Republicans (of Republican Congress members, only 10 in the Senate and 43 in the House voted against it; of Democrats, 28 in the Senate and 156 in the House voted against it).
This isn't to say that NAFTA is objectively bad policy; most economists argue that it ultimately benefited the whole country. However it did expose US manufacturing to significant competition, reduced bargaining power for manufacturing workers, and shocked communities which were solely reliant on the sector to support them. Larger cities were mostly unaffected due to their more diverse economies, and in many cases thrived off increased trade and lower prices for goods. As a reminder, urbanites trend Democrat, rural folk trend Republican.
The trope that urban liberals successfully screwed over rural conservatives just isn't true. Instead it seems that, at screwing themselves over, urban liberals failed and rural conservatives succeeded.
https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1031/vote_103_1_00395.htm https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/1993575
That's called being politically savvy and out playing your competition which is why the Democratic party is always in free fall.
All this back and forth leads to this point: The Democrats are not equipped to handle a full assault of our democracy and thinking Gavin Newsom is the guy with some funny parrot tweets is not a real answer.
Oh, I'm not saying anything about Newsom, just trying to dispel some sadly common misinformation about NAFTA. I've yet to form a solid opinion of the guy, but I'm not without cynical biases, so he's got an uphill battle to win in my mind.
When you don’t have a choice that didn’t back NAFTA then you vote for the ones who are currently saying it sucks. Not the ones pointing to obscure economic indicators and saying everything is fine.
Jesus Christ he hasn’t even announced he’s running yet. Why are we already pretending these are the only two alternatives?
We don’t need to choose a neoliberal over a fascist… we can push for someone better.
I’ve never tried to choose the neoliberal but I’ve never not had to vote for them.
If it’s not Newsom then it’ll be someone else I don’t like.
Neoliberals Don't oppose fascists.
He will work with the fascist to come up with a compromise that the fascists can live with. That probably means sacrificing vulnerable groups and rallying around right wing talking points.
He is right wing. Gavin newsom is just right wing. the fact that there's a uneven deeper more belligerent right wing out there doesn't mean that he is somehow an alternative to it.
This attitude is how you ended up electing Trump.
Its bonkers that you guys are spiralling into a dystopian shitscape day by day and just cant bring yourself to acknowledge that any alternative has to be better.
The Democrats refusing to acknowledge the desires of the voters, and actively screwing over workers is how we ended up with Trump. The Democrats are "better", but only in the sense that they aren't going to fix the problems that led to fascism. They've shown over and over that they'd rather support fascism, then fight against it.
This is how I feel. I can’t stand neoliberals but some people on here are delusional for saying they won’t vote for Newsom if he is nominated.
It's not only about voting, but the complaining.
It seems like the problem in the US is getting people to give a fuck. By spreading this narrative that the democrats are just slower fascists or whatever your just encouraging progressive voters not to vote.
Well then maybe the Democrats should do somthing to counter that claim. Maybe something like not supporting fascism, and actually fighting against it when they have the chance.
I’ve been voting for those alternatives for a quarter century and it hasn’t stopped the dystopian hellscape from happening.
That is not true. Slower fascism isn't appreciably better than faster fascism. The you of four or eight years in the future doesn't have any less of a right to not live under fascism than the you of right now. If by choosing the "better" alternative you throw away your ability to actually stop fascism you're missing the forest for the trees.
Oh fuck you, you tell the left they can't critisize these people during elections and now we're not supposed to critisize them aftet elections too? When are we supposed to ask for things that keep us from dying then? You're part of the problem.
First, criminalizing homelessness is fascism. If you can't take a stand for the homeless how can you expect anyone to take a stand for you? You thibk he won't throw you under the bus if it's politically expedient? Second, do you intend to repeat the same song and dance that got Trump elected twice? The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. Third, why are you compromising from now? Like come on it's still 2025, even if you're going to vote blue no matter who, now you should be projecting strength not compliance.
He threw trans people under the bus, and there's no way in hell I'm voting for that.
Leftists: "Democratic politicians are feckless. They need to get on social media to call out Trump's bullshit on daily basis! When is a leader going to step up?!"
Somewhere, a finger curls on a monkey's paw.
Calling him out on social media is absolutely not what I want and is definitely feckless.