Is that not in tandem with Trump voters’ shift to Russia? “I’d rather be Russian than a Democrat” and Trump voters talking about plans to immigrate to Russia if Trump lost are things I seem to remember in recent years.

My original point was not to claim that Republican politicians necessarily care about what their base wants, but they do seem to understand that they have to at least campaign heavily on populist issues to get elected. And that disloyalty to Trump is met with rabid outrage from their base.

Kevin who?

Whether you like it or not, you can’t say members of the Republican party are not beholden to their voters. Can’t say as much for the Democrats, which is why they keep losing.

FWIW she actually didn’t back out with the moderate candidates before Super Tuesday. She did after splitting the progressive vote between her and Bernie, giving Biden the win.

It’s only been a week since he was elected. Dude’s not even in office yet and there’s already shock and scandal coming from his own party. This is going to be a very long four years…

Maybe it’s because I grew up in Illinois, but Missouri has been giving me whiplash over the last several years. I’d expect the kinda politics coming out of there from Florida, not a Midwestern state.

The new form of city government meant there was a significant number of candidates to parse through. And ranking several instead of picking just one favorite also added time. It took me several days to do my due diligence on all the measures and candidates when before I could usually get it all done in one.

Not complaining, though I could imagine people who don’t take voting seriously easily getting impatient/overwhelmed.

Will be writing my reps later today and I sent a few bucks to Bernie since I figure what better way to tell a politician they’re barking up the right tree?

I know online petitions are generally cringe but if there was one backing up Bernie’s stance here and telling the Dems to get their heads out of their own asses, I’d sign it in a heartbeat. If other people feel similarly, maybe we should get the ball rolling? Best case Dems get the message, worst case we waste our time and nothing changes, right?

I finished my bottle of Laphroaig 10 on election night :⁠-⁠\

Cries in American

He would never. But Biden could go over Congress and send whatever the fuck he wants. What’s Congress gonna do, impeach him?

Twist: They’re alive. And they’re angry. Choose your weapon.

Sweet potatoes. Something about them made me gag. Every Thanksgiving a heaping pile of them would wind up on my plate and I’d have to power though or else face the wrath of my grandmother.

Nowadays I love them. Dunno when the switch happened.

USB-C has changed the entire game. It’s a completely different game now. It’s like Yahtzee vs Uno. Or like Call of Duty vs Microsoft Flight Simulator. Remember playing freeze tag or dodgeball? Well it’s not like that anymore. Now it’s like playing soccer.

How do you get a full-year’s pay after getting fired?

#dontputyourdickinthat

What do you expect in this economy? Groceries aren’t the only things being hit by inflation.

Blaming the voting public does nothing other than to help us feel better about ourselves. “It’s not our fault, the people are just stupid and naive. They were always going to vote for Trump, there’s nothing else we could have done”. It’s what we’ve been doing the past three election cycles and it isn’t working.

We can’t make them change. Change only comes from within. We can’t keep telling them they’re better off with us. We need to pass legislation so that the average, uniformed voter can see it for themselves.

Frankly, this take is profoundly arrogant and indicative of why the Democrats lost to Trump (again, arguably again-again).

This implies that the Democrats could not have possibly done any better, or at least submits to the idea that there is nothing meaningful to be learned from this failure. It projects onto the general electorate a deterministic outlook, that they were always going to vote for Trump no matter what as a way to shield the Democrats and ourselves from accountability.

This is a difficult time time for all of us. We are looking down the barrel of another Trump presidency, one that promises to be a significant tragedy in the history of our nation. It hurts to know what’s coming and people are resigning themselves to complacency in order to ease the pain.

But if we want to stand a chance the next time around, we need to understand that the Democrats played a role in their own demise. We need to demand better, not make excuses for them and perpetuate the mediocrity that has been the Democratic platform over the last decade. We can’t just hope for another deadly crisis to get us out of this one.

Most of these accomplishments, while they do benefit the middle class, are largely invisible to the average American who’s not perpetually following politics.

Student loan forgiveness only directly affects people who go to college, an increasingly less popular/accessible career path amongst the working class. It also has restrictions and has been facing legal challenges, both of which limit its effectiveness.

Lower prescription drug costs are only really visible to people who are taking prescription drugs long-term and doesn’t prevent the healthcare system from bankrupting you in countless other ways.

The Affordable Care Act is arguably the single most significant accomplishment for the Democratic party in my millennial lifetime and if it survives to the next election cycle it will be old enough to vote in it.

As for the rest, improving infrastructure moves too slowly for people to notice in the short-term and despite the efforts to slow them we are still facing record increases to the cost of living and job insecurity.

The working class is getting desperate, people are worried about how they’re going to keep up with rising grocery prices or whether they’ll get laid off from their job when they’re living paycheck to paycheck. If you don’t own a home yet you’re likely questioning whether homeownership will ever be within reach while your landlord increases your rent for no apparent reason other than greed.

In a relative sense to the struggles the working class has been facing coming out of the pandemic, the Democrats have thrown them bones, told them the economy is great, in fact it’s the best in the world when you know for a fact you were better off before the pandemic.

Do we know tariffs and mass deportations aren’t going to make anything better? Do we know things are likely to get a lot worse? Are we the average American? The results of the election prove that we aren’t.