Nate Silver goes OFF on land acknowledgments by Democrats

Completely agree with him. End this nonsense about reparations too.

Nate is such a CUNT. Jesus, people thinking it's wrong to at the very least acknowledge historical injustices--and how we've all profited from them--is bonkers. But right-wing thinking has taken over, so there you go.

Sometime I find it respectful to do it. Other times it just seems like performance art nonsense. It depends how full of shit the people doing it are. Overall, it should stop unless it’s a sacred place or important historical event.

Half the time those “injustices” had even worse ones before them that get whitewashed by noble savage condescension.

Really earning his Thiel money

He is right. He was 100% correct about the electoral map for the past election. You don’t have to agree with him to recognize that he’s no idiot when it comes to the current landscape.

We have to purge the woke from the party if we want to win a General again, which is very unlikely to happen and that leaves many of us politically homeless. The woke did not give us gay marriage. Those were the moderates. The woke only care about very small marginal groups that have their own agenda, which is always far-left.

America has shifted to the right.

r6 If you're going to pretend to be a Democrat then don't use words like "woke"

But it's totally believable that you'd be 'forced' to vote for Trump because of, uh, land acknowledgment.

Land acknowledgements make my stomach torn. They are the modern equivalent of the public prayer/—an offensive public display that does nothing but demonstrate how much empty virtue the person reciting them has. They do nothing to help anyone.

Welcome to my block list. I am a lifelong Democrat. I have never voted Republican and I live in a red state r7

Land acknowledgments are bullshit. He is right to criticize us for this dumbass behavior.

I read these threads and a lot of people seem to come to the same conclusion: the Democratic Party needs to become less inclusive in order to appeal to a bunch of people who are not inclusive, which I find to be a strange sentiment on a message board that caters to gay men and women.

Regardless of all that, I think it's stupid to sing the National Anthem at a sportsball game, but we do it and the world doesn't end.

Everybody just needs to calm the fuck down.

Actual dumbass behaviour is announcing when you're blocking someone. No one cares, just do it. Or pretend to do it, in your case.

I find the national anthem ridiculous and offensive too, but it doesn’t come off so self-righteous.

Land Acknowledgments are just virtue signaling. It’s not like anyone is making reparations or giving up the land.

Everyone knows what woke means. You don’t have to be a Trumper to use it. But Dems are good at policing the language and telling people what words they can use. It’s winning elections they suck at.

r14 And who in this thread so what words can or can't be used? No one. But using words like woke is a tell that someone is right wing. Rather like trying to pretend to be a victim.

If there's one group of people with WAY too much respect and power it's Native Americans. Thank God we have brave men like Nate Silver to stand up to the poorest people in the country.

Add this worthless cunt to the list of public figures who are tip-toeing towards the right-wing because they're worried about their money.

Also, the old "this won't completely solve the problem so we shouldn't even try" argument can be applied to any kind of social progress. It's what Clarence Thomas says about affirmative action.

Using the word doesn’t make someone right wing. It’s shorthand for a bunch of progressives ideas that everyone thought were cool in 2020 and now most Americans think is crap. Dems are too in the hole to emerge from the woke trap and thus monsters like Trump win elections.

[quote]Nate is pissed lately

She's pissed that I own her ass. And have my servants do plenty to it.

r18 is in the Morning Joe thread defending them for bending the knee to Trump...

He's right. But why didn't he say anything before---you know, back when this shit became standard for the party that half the country votes for, like 8 years ago? He only brings it up now because it's on the verge of ending. What a loser.

Who the fuck is this god damned queen and why should I give a rat's ass about what he/she/it thinks about anything, since her/his/its fat white hairy ass is owned by a right-wing fascist asshole.

Look. Doing stuff like this and calling everyone "colonists" turns regular voters off. If you want to keep losing, continue going about trying to "teach and preach". If you want to win, take the lectures back into the classroom.

Land acknowledgments are pointless and moronic, r22. I know of organizations that make people open regular meetings with them. No different than people who say "grace" at dinner.

[quote]If you're going to pretend to be a Democrat then don't use words like "woke"

Exactly! Its a dead giveaway every time. Constant bitching about the "far-left liberals" is a close second. Falling into the MAGA trap by using their terminology only enables their ignorance.

[quote]I read these threads and a lot of people seem to come to the same conclusion: the Democratic Party needs to become less inclusive in order to appeal to a bunch of people who are not inclusive, which I find to be a strange sentiment on a message board that caters to gay men and women.

That's what makes no sense. The people pushing the "get rid of woke" bullshit sound like they want Democrats to become a Republican-lite party to compete against the current MAGA-extremist Republican Party, when Democrats can't out MAGA the MAGAt's no matter how hard they try, which will only result in prolonging the MAGA virus in this country. We also are forgetting that electing people who are in favor of regressive policies usually face a backlash thereafter. It might work in one election cycle, but the overall trend has always been a shift towards more progressive and inclusive policies, no matter how hard Republicans try and demonize those words and actions. Now that idiots have enabled Trump to upend the system and weaken democracy, its at best a toss-up as to whether a free and fair election will be conducted under his watch. That's why you don't vote for batshit crazy candidates in the first place.

[quote]If you want to win, take the lectures back into the classroom.

Maybe in blue state classrooms where they aren't engaged in "sanitizing" parts of American history, so Brayden and Madisyn don't feel "bad" hearing that America wasn't always "great." Or banning books that are written from a different perspective than conservative Christian or anything acknowledging gay people being branded as "too sexual" or "grooming." Don't forget the outrage over CRT that Republicans exploited when it was never taught in public schools, only at colleges and universities. That's what you are up against in red-dominated states, but there have been instances of local school boards fighting back against the nonsense. I'm sure they feel empowered after the election, but like the last time, they will eventually overplay their hand once again.

r10 " Everybody just needs to calm the fuck down. "

That ship has sailed - no hope of that anymore.

I hate everything.

Land acknowledgments and similar "woke nonsense" forced some of the posters here to vote for Trump. For the third time.

r28. You're 100% correct. Tons of voters were completely prepared to vote for the Democratic nominee, but then they attended an event with a land acknowledgment and decided, "nope - gotta go with the orange cheetoh".

Huh?!!

They're stupid unless there's a significant amount of natives in the audience which their rarely are it's just a bunch of self congratulate b*******.

I don't hate Morning Joe for bending the knee. He went to meet the loon who'll be our President for the next 4 years. At least once in a while, MJ has guests on that are connected to reality. Alot of MSNBC is pure pandering. If they ever hinted Harris could lose, their viewers would go ape shit. So they are almost useless when it comes to understanding the world as it is

Land acknowledgments harm no one. Calm your tits assholes.

Also, my fellow adults, "a lot" is two words.

I came here just to say that it is great to see acknowledgment spelled correctly. That’s rare on the DL.

That’s my final judgement on this thread!

The whole history of humans writ large is land theft and colonization

Stop trying to pretend that you’re special and admit that you’re a grifter

Move on Democrats

Land acknowledgments seem like something you’d see in a social justice committee meeting in the basement of a Unitarian church on a Wednesday evening. Keep them there.

Nate is pissing vinegar here but he’s not wrong. We can’t win elections with performative gestures that convey more than a tinge of “you’re white and that should make you feel guilty.”

Anyone who is POC and wants to do land acknowledgments or reparations is free to turn over their bank account and home to Native Americans or if you’re white you can turn it over to blacks. Feel free to start on your own.

They do them at a non-profit theater company I frequent - which is to be expected given the demographic, but they do seem annoyingly performative and hollow. How about donating even a very small percent of the box office to a Native American school and mentioning that on the program? I give to one out west - only 40 bucks a year - but even that small amount is more than just words.

R36 There you go, messing up the thread. Spelling counts!

Oops never mind

I’ve thought it would be so cool if Congress would pass a law recognizing these statements as a legal admission that the land in question belongs to Native Americans and that tribe can then go to court and regain the land based on the admission. It would be funny to see the same groups switch in an instant to denying that the land belongs to the Indians.

[quote]“you’re white and that should make you feel guilty.”

I'm tired of this thing where we have to walk on eggshells around the fragile egos of some white people. We do a lot of performative shit in this country, and for years some of our traditions have hurt the feelings of non-white people, but that didn't stop those things from being done.

I think that most minorities don't hold the current-day majority accountable for the sins of their ancestors. They would just like some acknowledgment that some in the current majority benefit in the present day from some of those sins.

If a stupid land acknowledgment and the idea of reparations moving anywhere out of the talking phase is all you have to worry about, then I would say your life is pretty okay. Throw the Native Americans a performative bone. Think about that the next time you're pledging to a piece of cloth, singing about your country, and praying to an unseen, all-knowing, all-powerful myth.

He's right.

Normal people roll their eyes at such performative self flagellating theatrics.

Do Brazilian politicians make these statements about the Incas? No they fucking well don't.

Land didn't "belong" to Native people anymore than it belonged to dinosaurs or buffalo. Land gets conquered and lost and reconquered, bought and sold. The fetishisation of primitive "indigenous" people and cultures, some of which were highly violent and hierarchical monarchies, is a fucking joke.

But Nate, we’re woke doormats!

Or, you know, he could care less about insignificant things like this and about how Republicans are set to destroy democracy. Not saying Democrats don’t need to check priorities either, but pundits like him don’t help stoking up shit that doesn’t need to be.

Honest question…do the Palestinians do land back acknowledgments to the Jews?

American Indians / Jews x White Colonialists / Palestinians

"The people pushing the "get rid of woke" bullshit sound like they want Democrats to become a Republican-lite party to compete against the current MAGA-extremist Republican Party, when Democrats can't out MAGA the MAGAt's no matter how hard they try,"

Sorry r25, the #StopWoke campaign has always had lots of support on the "far-left;" real leftists have called it for what it is for almost a decade now---middle-class narcissism employed by DEI grifters to divide the masses for their corporate overlords. The only difference is that now people are saying it repeatedly and loudly, and now milquetoast Dems and woke poster children like AOC are saying it. It's over. It was always a cover for the most DINO politics anyway---wake up.

Here's the funniest part. With all the left pandering, Native Americans showed up to vote for Trump:

n Montana, the four counties that reported the sharpest shifts to the right had Native American majorities. In South Dakota, all nine counties with Native American majorities shifted rightward. The same trend held true in neighboring North Dakota, where Sioux County — which is 81 percent Native American — showed the biggest rightward shift of any of the state’s 53 counties, at 10 points.

Native Americans were concerned about inflation. I guess land acknowledgment meant little to them.

"Land didn't "belong" to Native people anymore than it belonged to dinosaurs or buffalo. Land gets conquered and lost and reconquered, bought and sold. The fetishisation of primitive "indigenous" people and cultures, some of which were highly violent and hierarchical monarchies, is a fucking joke."

Exactly. It's Blood and Soil-level shit. It's the dumbest inversion of the position that should be taken re: sovereignty and the national self-determination. Elevate the Native Americans who are truly an underclass in the US as their own "nation" when their tribal leaders are so corrupt and unethical that they can't even be bothered to provide their people with social infrastructure needed to live outside of major communities. To what end, when there are real nations today that exist under the US neocolonial yoke? Fake and dumb.

Yep. Hispanics - oops 'Latinx' - Black voters, Native American voters, voting Trump is the death knell of woke. Woke is 'supply without demand'. These woke peddling fools do NOT speak for the people they claim to speak for. They don;t even understand the people they claim to 'stand with'.

"Throw the Native Americans a performative bone."

I guarantee you that the average Native American doesn't want it. This is exactly like mandatory pronoun disclosure rituals and the word "Latinx"---activist-manufactured bullshit that everyone hates. Try to deny it.

You mean a non binary student at an elite college with green hair and a nose ring doesn't speak for all people of color. Shocker.

'Washingtonians are often asked what it feels like to watch the second age of Trump dawn. Oddly, it does not feel much like his first arrival in 2016. It feels more like Barack Obama’s in 2008 or Bill Clinton’s in 1992 – less a political than a social revolution, in which philosophical habits will be broken along with political hierarchies. This particular social revolution owes most of its energy to a revulsion against woke.'

This shit enrages me as a liberal. We used to be about doing things to make peoples lives actually better.

Now it’s all about symbols and performance. You’ve got to be there telling people that everything they like is shit, and you’re the only one who’s a good enough person to see it. Or they must embrace something patently ridiculous or you’re a bad and lesser person.

And it’s been a beautiful stick we have handed the rightwing to beat us with. Let’s make no mistake — they’re even more full of shit than we are. Their performance is all about how liberals, minorities and immigrants are destroying America, which is as big a load of nonsense as “respect my pronouns” could ever be. What’s really destroying America is rampant plutocracy — what the rightwing is pedaling.

But there’s a winning difference for the Right. The ridiculous lies they are peddling actually appeal to rightwing voters. It’s straight demagoguery and it works. Liberals on the other hand aren’t happy unless they’re scolding shaming and blaming. That’s how to alienate people, not energize them.

Nate Silver has pushed out of the box of neurodivergency, forgotten who he is, and is now just a pompous-ass big mouth who is all about the clicks and ka-ching.

This election came down to two factors: 1) Inflation; and 2) she is a Black woman. No one wants to admit it — at least the racism/misogyny part. However, the right is so busy spinning a tale of wokeness and political correctness because it resonates with their hate-filled base, thusly diverting their attention away from the fact that the MAGAts are about to take a wrecking ball to every part of our government in an effort to destroy the only force that keeps billionaires from becoming trillionaires and sends the rest of us to the poor house.

The proof is in the issues-based polling. If you present Democratic ideas for how to proceed, as long as you don't put a "d" behind it, the MAGAts love the ideas. For instance, polling on the idea that first-time homebuyers would receive $25000 down payment assistance was wildly popular. until the MAGAts were told that it was Kamala's idea (and I even heard many of them argue that no, it was Trump who was going to make it happen). But then the same polling asked them about the Project 2025 plans, and these people replied that they had never heard of these plans and hated them upon presentation. And yet they voted for Trump in sufficient numbers that he's going to be POTUS, and he's going to implement these policies, and nobody with less than half a $billion in worth is going to like them.

What the Republicans did in this cycle was just incredible. They took an unpopular candidate spouting unpopular ideas and spun it into gold. They took the most legislatively accomplished POTUS, who stood us up after a worldwide once-in-a-century pandemic, who curtailed inflation without instituting price controls, who restored our standing in the world, who contained our greatest geopolitical foe without a single US soldier on the ground, who built an economy that is so robust that economists around the world have said is the tent pole holding up the entire worldwide economy... and turned him into an abject failure.

The Republicans cracked the code. They have gone on a buying binge over the last 20+ years and have acquired the majority of the media, and as Marshall McLuhan said, the medium is the message. Combine it with the teachings of master propagandists like Goebbels and Orwell, and you have exactly what we see in today's media landscape: right wing, far right wing, and so off the charts right wing that no liberal or progressive message can get noticed, except for the ones that the right/far right want us to hear. So, nobody talks about the common-sense solutions that Kamala (and Biden before her) proposed, and instead focuses on meaningless incantations held at the beginnings of public meetings.

Keep attacking the messinger even when he tells you the truth.

I'm sorry but what common sense solutions did Kamala come up. She barely had any new policy initiatives at all. She was I'm not Trump and he's a fascist. Which worked for me but maybe not for alot of other Americans.

Some of you dumb fags need to get outside of a Queer bar, Sephora, and your social media feed of LGBTQIA+ & race baiting influencers for awhile and get a grip on reality.

You’re really misreading the anti-woke thing, r57. Even in my very liberal ny area I saw people making the whole election about “protecting girls sports,” and that nonsense was gaining traction.

We have met the enemy and he is us.

PROTECT TRANS INFANTS!

[quote]What the Republicans did in this cycle was just incredible. They took an unpopular candidate spouting unpopular ideas and spun it into gold. They took the most legislatively accomplished POTUS, who stood us up after a worldwide once-in-a-century pandemic, who curtailed inflation without instituting price controls, who restored our standing in the world, who contained our greatest geopolitical foe without a single US soldier on the ground, who built an economy that is so robust that economists around the world have said is the tent pole holding up the entire worldwide economy... and turned him into an abject failure.

And the Democrats helped them right along with this. Biden, in his greatly diminished state, unfortunately did almost NO messaging of all of his achievements. No press conferences (where he would have had his decline exposed much earlier); no road rallies, no big speeches. The utter lack of communications allowed the shallow Repubs the huge opportunity to step into the vacuum and make the message all their own, and spin it into the deformed narrative suitable to their twisted needs.

Biden's staying in the race only finished the job. If he had stepped aside in 2023, and let a strong primary season occur, with a strong message and agenda following that, we'd have a Democrat in the WH in January.

R41, you’re not wrong, but Nate’s point is about winning elections. And on that point he’s not wrong either.. A “land acknowledgment statement” at a Democratic Party meeting is exactly the kind of thing that can (and does) get scooped up and used to mock, ridicule and marginalize the Democratic side. It’s not as damaging as “defund the police” or some of the trans athlete stuff, but it’s unhelpful to say the least.

There will be horrible consequences for our having lost the election last month.

r55 You have to be a moron to actually maintain the idea Dems are only about symbols and performance, given Harris had a solid policy slate. Unless you get your 'news' from Fox, there's no genuine way you can actually believe that claim.

[quote] Harris had a solid policy slate.

That’s news. What was it?

"If it becomes routine, or worse yet, is strictly performative, then it has no meaning at all," said Kevin Gover, a citizen of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma and undersecretary for museums and culture at the Smithsonian Institution. "It goes in one ear and out the other." (Gover said only one or two Smithsonian museums have land acknowledgments; the National Museum of the American Indian is among those that do, and its acknowledgment is only one sentence long.)

[quote]You have to be a moron to actually maintain the idea Dems are only about symbols and performance, given Harris had a solid policy slate. Unless you get your 'news' from Fox, there's no genuine way you can actually believe that claim.

Exactly, R65. The closest thing to a "platform" that Republicans had was loyalty to Donald Trump and tax cuts for the rich. The closest thing to a "platform" Donald Trump had was retribution against political enemies, mass deportations, and saying only he could "fix" the economy despite being handed one in good condition because of Biden's policies.

It's being pissy about announcing that you always return your shopping cart to a designated spot.

It's being pissy about throwing wads of money on a restaurant table for the server, just to show (and dramatically) how swell you are and how superior to others.

It's carrying your dirty old NPR 'driveway moments' tote when the occasion merits the right message.

It's know the fault or disgraceful back history of everything and having no fucking idea for any substantive step toward a solution - unless there's the opportunity to trumpet some popular cause of the moment while pointing out that you have friends who are POC, trans, immigrants, or low income (not realizing that your assigned HR specialist isn't really your friend, nor the guy whose baby you rode in twice.

And it's the action in OP's post, a very grave and fleeting and hollow show of dramatic seriousness that improves no one's lot.

[quote]Trump had the concepts of a solid policy slate.

[quote]That’s news. What was it?

There, FTFY.

In all honestly, I could prattle on for at least 1000 words talking about Kamala's proposals, from the new homebuyers assistance to expanding the child tax credit and new business tax credit, to targeted aid to help poor people start businesses, buy homes and build wealth, to... But nobody knew about them because this election was not about policy. It was truly the 'vibe' election, which was masterfully curated by the Republicans, with a solid assist from Biden and the Democrats (in total agreement with R63). But that's the rub; the vibe was that the economy was in a "deep recession" (words I heard from MAGAts on constant repeat, despite the fact that our economy has literally never been stronger), that immigrants were rampaging through the streets eating our dogs and cats (when in fact crime among immigrants is roughly half that of citizens), that despite our leadership throughout the world, we are — to quote Shitler — "a failing nation."

The worst part of it all: the MAGAts are going to make Trump's vision of the USA come true. We're going to surrender our leadership of the planet. We're going to give up our influence and control. And we're going to cede leadership to, ultimately, China with a detour through Russia because [italic]that's what the oligarchs want.[/italic]

Here's how you'll know they've been successful: by 2028, oil will be priced in Yuan and the dollar will no longer be the world's reserve currency as Trump and Musk bankrupt the Treasury and grift $trillions.

And this will prove Nate SIlver a useful idiot because the vast majority of US residents won't even notice our fall as we'll be busy arguing over "woke", trans bathrooms, and virtue signaling... just as the oligarchs have planned and brought to fruition.

TLDR ^

[quote] In all honestly, I could prattle on for at least 1000 words talking about Kamala's proposals, from the new homebuyers assistance to expanding the child tax credit and new business tax credit, to targeted aid to help poor people start businesses, buy homes and build wealth, to...

Well, better late than never, but a thousand words would be overkill. A sentence or two providing the nutshell for each of the top three would be sufficient.

Finally! Someone has the stones to insult Democrats! You go girl!

I don't want to blame Harris. She had almost no time to prepare for her campaign. But maybe spending a little time at the Dem Convention actually talking about new policies would have been good. Instead it was all Mamala and Doug and feeling good. Also she needed to take a day and address the ads about paying for transing prisoners. And I would have thrown in coming out against men in women's sports. But she did the best she could as a VP to an unpopular President.

I completely agree with both of Silver's comments in that link.

If this level of stupid continues for much longer, the magats and rethugs will have had time and political muscle to ensure that the dems or any other opposing political viewpoint will simply have no structural way to make changes.

Stupid like this alienates people. It does alienate me with the only difference being that I know better than to think the rethug "solutions" would actually work or improve things.

It doesn't take too long to gerrymander districts, appoint an overwhelming majority of judges, and override any objections.

r72 Lucky for you that her campaign website still has everything listed. Go on, now insist that somehow doesn't count.

[quote]Lucky for you that her campaign website still has everything listed.

So she didn't learn anything from Hillary and Hillary's people just referring to her website.

I was side-eyeing Nate for this till I got to the part about Boulder wine moms and OK, he has a point.

i let out a loud fart whenever they do land acknowledgements at theatres

I don't know if it's always been the case but Nate Silver seems like a total asshole these days. Very unpleasant person.

It's not always performative. At a music conference this summer, they did a land acknowledgment, and the GUEST ARTIST was a wonderful Navaho pianist, playing music based on Navaho themes and imagery.

Some tribes were competitive and war-like (mostly on the Great Plains, where hunting buffalo was an essential activity for survival, and since buffalo are migratory animals, that forced the native people to follow, sometimes into lands that other tribes considered theirs. Sioux (Lakota), Comanches, Kiowas, Pawnees, Osage, and other tribes from the Plains had a horseback culture and followed this lifestyle.

However, some tribes were very settled and had sufficient regular food sources that they didn't migrate or compete with other tribes. In most of the Northwest, salmon and deer provided a plentiful protein supply, and edible roots were ample to provide starches. Berries and other native fruits provided vitamins. Populations were relatively stable and the tribes stayed within more or less defined areas - with some seasonal migration based upon weather and food sources. Coastal tribes also fished ocean fish and whales, and traded up and down the coast. In some parts of the Southeast, there were some very settled tribes, such as the Cherokee, who had established permanent villages and practiced agriculture.

r77 Because, of course, this election was totally won and lost based on policy positions. But well done for doing exactly what I said you'd do.

The mentality that helped Kamala lose is the same mentality that had aneurysms over Beyonce doing a *country* album.

[quote]It's not always performative. At a music conference this summer, they did a land acknowledgment, and the GUEST ARTIST was [bold]a wonderful Navaho pianist,[/bold] playing music based on Navaho themes and imagery.

Were you clutching an NPR tote bag why you wrote that?

Is it even possible that the guest Navaho? Navajo? Naabeehó? pianist MIGHT NOT have been wonderful?

To even imagine such a thing is akin to picturing Jeffrey being upbraided by Ina Garten for having selected 'a really bad' baguette at the boulangerie. It's fairly impossible.

I get that some of the stuff comes across as performative or even cringe, but allowing far right narrative to seep in is the reason we are where we are. At the end of the day, what we used to call “political correctness” and have now allowed the far-right to deride as “woke” is largely pro-kindness and pro-decency behavior. Almost all of is an attempt to put one’s heart in the right place. And yes, a lot of it makes me roll my eyes, but I have that luxury as a privilege person with good values. But give the choice to live with correctives that sometimes get it wrong but that are largely good-hearted and decent versus living under the wanton cruelty of MAGA, I’m going to choose the first every time.

No one supports MAGA cruelty but you’re missing the point. Native Americans showed big moves this election. Trump. Land acknowledgment touchy didn’t mean shit to them. As a matter of fact the Republicans now have the most diverse base of any party since 1964. Big gains among Latino, black and Asian American voters.

Democrats are the party of upper class, college educated mostly whites (who other groups kind of despise.)

…this election to Trump.

Silver isn’t wrong, and part of the problem is that Democrats — especially on the far left — can be condescending.

Harris spent a long time pandering to the far left and they still didn’t show up to vote for her. Had she dumped the extremists and targeted the middle more aggressively, she could have pulled off a win.

The big problem the Dems have is that many party activists think that politics are a closed TikTok struggle session rather than real outreach to people who aren’t like us.

And too many spend their time shrinking the base. It’s even happening on the thread here (“if you believe this or use this word instead of that word, you’re not one of us.”)

The crazy antisemitic shit also didn’t help. “Palestine” as a cause polls as one of the least popular in the country with a -67% net favorability rate. That’s as unpopular as a federal total ban on abortion.

The sight of affluent college students rioting on campuses, blocking Jews from entering classes, and screaming shit like “globalize the intifada” and “final solution is coming” was pure electoral poison that too many Democrats eagerly drank down.

[quote]Harris spent a long time pandering to the far left and they still didn’t show up to vote for her. Had she dumped the extremists and targeted the middle more aggressively, she could have pulled off a win.

Exactly who are the far left in your weird little mind? The idea Harris didn't reach out to centrists enough is moronic.

[quote]And too many spend their time shrinking the base. It’s even happening on the thread here

The point being that the people using those words were never Democrats and are here just pretending to be "concerned" as proven by their own post histories.

For example, when someone refers to "the Democrats" in the third person, it's a pretty sure bet they aren't a Democrat.

[quote] The idea Harris didn't reach out to centrists

She could have, with a moderate VP choice, but she went with Walz to appease those on the left.

[quote] when someone refers to "the Democrats" in the third person, it's a pretty sure bet they aren't a Democrat.

I much prefer when people write out who they are talking about, like “the Democrats” or “the Republicans”, instead of using “us” and “we” and expecting people to figure out what group they are implying they are part of.

r90 She needed to counterbalance the fact that everything about her was solidly centrist. Telling that the only example you can give of her giving in to the "far left" is her choice for the most unimportant job in the land.

r91 Aww, is context difficult for you?

[quote]For example, when someone refers to "the Democrats" in the third person, it's a pretty sure bet they aren't a Democrat.

Ridiculous. Every Democratic politician in America uses this construction. So do I, and I've never voted for anyone other than a Democrat.

Thanks, R89, for volunteering to be the archetype of what’s wrong with our party in every way, and why we performed so poorly this past election cycle.

You’re the GOP’s best asset.

R1 Bonnie Prince CUNT needs to go fuck herself. Lord knows nobody else is doing it. Pick up a history book while you're at it.

r94 Haha, and now suddenly it's "our party" after being called out for his bullshit. Please, you're fooling no-one. Especially when you're in other threads defending health insurance CEOs.

He’s a nasty assed cunt

[qote]Harris spent a long time pandering to the far left and they still didn’t show up to vote for her. Had she dumped the extremists and targeted the middle more aggressively, she could have pulled off a win.

Both statements are demonstrably untrue. The far left did show up to vote for her; the final results came in at 48.4% to 49.9%; are you really trying to say that the "far left" accounts for less than 1.6% of the population, and they all didn't vote? And if so, how do you account for the high turnout in districts that are traditionally "far left" like college towns, let alone the "far left" states?

And then you posit that she should "dump the extremists" and pander to "the middle." So, she's damned if she does, and she's damned if she doesn't. Got it.

The reality is that this election turned on two issues: 1) Inflation and; 2) she's a Black woman. Again, not one person on this thread wants to address the misogyny issue when it is clearly front and center, and the commentary continues to downplay the fact that the issue that Republicans ran on was inflation. The mantra on the right starting when Trump announced he was running (to avoid prosecution, but that's another thread altogether) as inflation was raging. He grabbed that issue and talked about how he and only he could get prices down (by using tariffs, a concept that the majority of this country simply does not understand and is in for a giant surprise in a few months as inflation ticks upward, as seen in anticipatory price increases which have already begun). Meanwhile, the Inflation Reduction Act kicked in and the inflation rate was 2.9% on election day. It didn't matter; the meme of high prices due to Biden was set and not budging.

The data scientists have started talking about the actual underlying reasons for Harris' loss, and while its food for bigots to blame it on the "far left", it came down to the public believed Harris would be a continuation of Biden's presidency. If there was one flaw in her campaign, it was that she didn't differentiate herself from Biden, which given that we now know was a touchy subject, makes sense. She showed loyalty to Biden (for instance, on [italic]The View[/italic] when she had nothing prepared to claim as a distinction) which the Republicans seized upon as a status-quo message in an election that they had spun into being one of change despite the fact that we've seen it and been there; the one line that brings the entire election into focus is when the MAGAts said that they didn't like the policy that Trump promised but they loved the low prices and stability of the Trump economy (with the convenient memory holing of his utter failure for the last quarter of his term which set the stage for inflation both natural as the supply chain convulsed and then when corporations determined that they could raise prices arbitrarily, make enormous gains in profitability, and blame Biden for it).

Ultimately, the loss was a narrow one with the difference being the 5th or 6th lowest difference out of the +/-50 cycles in American history. Trump won by the same means he won in '16 and picked up millions more votes in '20: motivating traditionally non-voting portions of the population (basically, young men) and peeling off enough votes among male Blacks and Latinos. While everyone loves to point out that this was the electorate that made the difference, they somehow miss the underlying point: men do not want a female boss.

The lesson here for the Democrats is really pretty simple: if this country ever elects a female POTUS, she will be Republican.

R98, we got demolished. We lost the presidency. We got gut-punched in the House. We lost the presidency to a deeply unpopular one term former president.

We didn’t message anything relevant to the working class. We didn’t message anything relevant on inflation. We wasted way too much time pandering to supporters of “Palestinian” terrorism and other niche issues, and most of our losing candidates lacked even a rudimentary understanding of issues important to the working class.

It’s hard to convince someone that they’re “voting against their best interests” when we won’t talk about those interests in accessible ways and fill most of the airspace with unpopular niche messaging.

Oh, and running as the “party supporting democracy” after forcing the winner of the primary out of the election and replacing him with a party insider’s choice who didn’t win a single primary vote also didn’t help our moral position. Biden is very popular with Black voters, and nullifying their primary votes likely didn’t help us either.

[quote]r9 = I am a lifelong Democrat

Sure, Jan.

R43 = triggered white man. How does a land acknowledgement affect you in any way? If you've been to the rez, you'd know how few fucks the outside world gives about the Indians. There's serious poverty and hardship going on, at least here in AZ.

Maybe it's an empty gesture, but I appreciate people pretending to care--maybe a land acknowledgement influences someone to donate to an organization benefiting Native Americans. I don't understand the criticism ("and I won't respond to it").

[quote]We wasted way too much time pandering to supporters of “Palestinian” terrorism and other niche issues

Where do you people even get this shit from? Give a solid, sourced example of this "pandering"

> Give a solid, sourced example of this "pandering"

Unshowered rioter in crowd, interrupting: “YOU ARE SUPPORTING GENOCIDE!”

Harris: He has a point!

No he doesn’t. The proper response is “sit down, you spoiled little child.”

...sourced...

[quote]For example, when someone refers to "the Democrats" in the third person, it's a pretty sure bet they aren't a Democrat.

The dead giveaway for right-wing sympathizing trolls is referring to the Democratic Party as the "Democrat Party." They use it as a pejorative and it's gramatically incorrect, making them look like idiots with no command of the English language.

[Quote] American Indians / Jews x White Colonialists / Palestinians

This is the latest attempt by Zionist weirdos to forgive the unforgivable. “Palestinians threw us off our land, we’re just taking it back!!!”

It’s very … “I know you are but what am I?”

First of all, the Israelites by their own admission conquered the land from the canaanites and enslaved them. It’s even in the Bible. (Of course, an incendiary shrub told them it was fine.) So if you want to be ridiculous and go back over a thousand years to try to “explain” an attack eighty years ago, there’s always that. Palestinians have a significant amount of Canaanite DNA.

More on this: Palestine wasn’t even Jewish when the Arab conquest took it over. It was Byzantine. The majority population was no longer Jewish at that time.

The actual correlation here is:

Palestinians/native Americans

Zionists/white American colonizers

[quote]we got demolished. We lost the presidency. We got gut-punched in the House.

No, we didn't get demolished; we lost by a historically low margin which was accounted for by the increase in traditionally non-voting young men voting and young Black and Latino men defecting from the Democratic party. Trump ran an explicit campaign in that segment (the Joe Rogan audience, largely) telling them a Harris presidency would result in even fewer young women being available. They heard the religious nuts come out of the woodwork claiming that we should abolish the 19th Amendment and push women back into the subservient roles they lived with until the 1970s (when they could finally open a checking account or get a loan without a man's guarantee). Has no one been paying attention to the incels? Particularly when the data shows that this group was instrumental in Trump's victory?

I'm not trying to say that this election wasn't a gut punch. It most definitely was. And we don't even have concepts of how bad things are going to be, and I'll guarantee that things are going to be worse than we can imagine. As far as the House is concerned, please note that we actually picked up a few seats and the Republican majority is even slimmer than it currently is. And here's the interesting fact: both parties tend to lose Congressmen along the way due to illness, death, and resignations for them to cash in moving to the private sectors that they help (as in quid pro quo). There are going to be opportunities for the Democrats to wreak some havoc in the House should, say, a member passes in March before they can hold the special elections to replace the three members Trump has named to his cabinet. It could literally throw control of the House to the Democrats ever-so-briefly (which is not to say that the Democrats would take advantage of it the way that Republicans would because Democrats are — face it, and I hate to admit it, but — pussies).

I was chatting with a long-time buddy over the weekend and he agreed that after the dust settles and Trump gets into power that things are going to take a dramatic turn. He's proposed two tent poles to his second administration in mass deportation (which they are moving on rapidly) and tariffs. Each singularly will demolish the economy and doing both together is going to push us into a very deep recession if not outright depression at least as bad as the Great Depression. To wit:

[quote]What were the major causes of the Great Depression? Among the suggested causes of the Great Depression are: the stock market crash of 1929; the collapse of world trade due to the Smoot-Hawley Tariff; government policies; bank failures and panics; and the collapse of the money supply.

So I suggest that Trump's tariffs will have the same impact in 2025 as Hoover's did in 1930, and it is not a stretch to see it leading to a catastrophic economic collapse.

As for mass deportation, bear in mind that immigrants contribute about $1 Trillion (with a 'T') to our $7 Trillion GDP. They pay all sorts of taxes to which they cannot claim a benefit (in fact, "In 2022 alone, undocumented immigrant households paid $46.8 billion in federal taxes and $29.3 billion in state and local taxes. Undocumented immigrants also contributed $22.6 billion to Social Security and $5.7 billion to Medicare"). And all of that gravy would dry up, leaving a massive hole in tax revenues. You do the math.

Do you think Trump is going to destroy the economy? It’s a lot more likely he will make a huge deal about deportations but in the end they will be similar in size to those done by Obama. Ditto for tariffs which he’ll use to make deals. That’s more likely than a Great Depression coming in his term.

[quote]Exactly who are the far left in your weird little mind? The idea Harris didn't reach out to centrists enough is moronic.

Exactly. Kamala didn't run a far-left campaign no matter how hard some here repeat it. Republicans have and will continue to portray the Democratic Party's presidential candidate as an extremist, far-left, liberal commie to rile up their base. That's been their game plan for decades.

What the Democratic Party should be doing is taking control of the narrative. Yes, they lost the election, but if the outcome was meant to be a true rebuke of Democratic policies, why didn't the Republicans perform better than they did? This was far from a landslide for them. Trump's margin of victory wasn't one. Democrats knew it was going to be difficult to hold the Senate by virtue of the number of seats they had to defend and where. The House ended up as a near repeat of 2022 with Republicans narrowly holding their majority. An recent example of an electoral wave or wipeout was in the United Kingdom over the summer, not the U.S.

Have we forgotten that prior to November 5th, Democrats consistently overperformed expectations in 2018, 2020 and the non-red wave of 2022. Referring back to the strategies that proved successful then should be a start. The worst thing the Democratic Party can do is to give up its core beliefs and try to adopt MAGA-like tactics. They will only lose more ground by doing that, plus alienating parts of their base. Let Trump continue to destroy the Republican Party from within and allow him the opportunity to implement his concepts of a plan, while watching his loyalist-filled cabinet fail to live up to expectations. Allow the people who voted for Trump and Republicans to get what they voted for. This incoming administration will be as chaotic as the first one and it is doubtful that words like 'stable' or 'effective' will ever be used to describe it.

[quote] Kamala didn't run a far-left campaign

The mistake you have made is not seeing that everything tied to the Democratic Party is part of her campaign, regardless if it is or isn’t on her website or something she did or didn’t say explicitly. The only way she could be free of it is if she had had some Sister Souljah moments and denounced the things that hurt her campaign.

For example, she had plenty of opportunities to denounce bio males in women’s sports and allowing illegals to roam free. Without explicitly rejecting them, they were de facto part of her campaign.

[quote]The mistake you have made is not seeing that everything tied to the Democratic Party is part of her campaign, regardless if it is or isn’t on her website or something she did or didn’t say explicitly

Right winger logic.

[quote] We acknowledge the land we are meeting on is the traditional territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, ...

I'm sorry, but when you have blue counties in true blue states like CA, NY, NH, and NJ flipping red, while losing the popular vote and the senate, I think it's time for the entire Democratic party to pause and reflect. Maybe hire a sage and go on a spirit healing quest to realign their chakras or something.

Also, you know what's hilarious? Native Americans overwhelmingly voted for Trump this election, per the exit polls.

[quote]Also, you know what's hilarious? Native Americans overwhelmingly voted for Trump this election, per the exit polls.

One should always be skeptical about exit polls.

“In the aftermath of the 2024 election, a national exit poll showed that 65% of Native American voters picked President-elect Donald Trump over Kamala Harris. That represented a huge flip from 2020, when Joe Biden won about 60% of Native voters.

But almost immediately, many Tribal communities questioned how that exit poll was conducted and called the numbers misleading. And it appears that they are right: A new report based on a more representative voter sample found that Harris carried a majority of Native Americans.”

[quote]Democrats knew it was going to be difficult to hold the Senate by virtue of the number of seats they had to defend and where.

And they didn't even hold the Senate, it was tied over the past few years and VP Harris gave the tiebreaker vote. Everyone knew the Democrats wouldn't hold it this election, with Manchin stepping down in WV and Tester's dim prospects in MT. They did alright there, given the circumstances, and slightly improved their margin in the House.

We're all going to be arguing for some time about what affected this election the most: inflation; poor border control; "woke" issues; the rise of the incels; or misogyny/racism against Harris. Or a combination of the above.

[quote]Harris spent a long time pandering to the far left and they still didn’t show up to vote for her. Had she dumped the extremists and targeted the middle more aggressively, she could have pulled off a win.

In today's edition of "why don't Democrats hate the same people I do?"...

Fuck off. Kamala didn't pander to progressives. The GOP ran a online disinformation campaign funded by Elon, operating at 240 decibels, and it stuck, particularly with "concerned" "moderates" like you.

R6, being "woke" i.e. empathetic is what makes is Democrats. You are wrong about gay marriage. Progressives were for it all along, moderates didn't get on board until years later. Progressives also fought for gays in the military, gay adoption, etc

Nate is a privileged weirdo and so is Donald Trump

You can't support billionaires while whining about privilege....

[quote]Look. Doing stuff like this and calling everyone "colonists" turns regular voters off. If you want to keep losing, continue going about trying to "teach and preach". If you want to win, take the lectures back into the classroom.

What the fuck is a "regular voter"? anything like "real Americans"? Besides promising to burn immigrants alive, any thoughts on how the D's can reach out to them?

I guess I missed the 5 months of Kamala Harris doing "teach and preach". Silly me. I thought she just promised to help young couples raise kids and buy houses.

Native Americans went for Trump. Counties in North and South Dakota who were primarily Native American showed the biggest move toward Trump in their states. You don’t have to look at exit polls. The results were there on Election Day.

The land acknowledgements had zero effect on getting votes for Dems. Maybe it even pissed Native Americans because it is well intentioned but completely meaningless.

[quote]Native Americans went for Trump

No.

“Native American voters leaned Democratic in the 2024 elections, with 57% supporting Harris compared to 39% for Trump.”

Agreed- just as christians praying and people standing for national anthems are just as empty,