this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2025
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Twenty-nine percent of non-voters who supported Biden in 2020 said U.S. support for the genocide was the top reason they sat the 2024 election, according to a survey by YouGov.

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

I think the guys at TLDR news said it best: if Trump threatening to withhold aid was enough to get a cease-fire deal, then Biden HAD enough leverage this whole time to get one. He just DIDN'T USE IT.

If this poll is to be believed (which is a big if), Biden and Harris let a fascist back into the whitehouse because they didn't want to stop a genocide.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 days ago

Not only did he have the option, he was advised by White House counsel that continuing to arm the genocide was a violation of domestic & international law. He did it anyway.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Imagine throwing an election because you love genocide too much.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 6 days ago (1 children)

How could the dems know that genocide is unpopular??! What's next, are you going to tell me canceling all student debt would have been popular? Throwing Trump in prison? Rescheduling cannabis? Not campaigning on building the wall and closing the border?

[–] [email protected] -5 points 5 days ago

Amazing anyone thinks that Gaza made a difference in votes.

The numbers are out. It was white men, white women, and hispanic men that stayed home because they couldn't stomach voting for a woman after voting for a white man with the same policies.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago (2 children)

It's amazing that she was in bed with Israel according to pro Palestinians and in bed with Hamas according to pro Israeli.

We all have been played through social media algorithms, and it didn't really matter what stance she had or would have.

Disinformation was so amazingly orchestrated that people on both sides of any issue hated her.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Harris was in bed with Israel.

Israel will always scream everyone is not pro Israel enough so enlightened centrists believe both sides are equally served.

Israel called Biden Hamas.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 days ago (1 children)

It's not disinformation and it's hardly specific to social media.

Democrats falling for republican's saying they're soft on crime when they unilaterally defund schools to fund the police, that they've opened the borders when they deport more immigrants than the republican administrations, that they're weak on foreign policy even while they're bombing half a dozen countries, etc goes back to Clinton.

Every single time the dems act like they're going to get the mythical moderate republican vote or a pat on the head or something if they just do the abhorrent shit the republicans are accusing them of not doing, and every time they fall for it.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

I think specifically they are referencing this:

In heavily Arab-American areas of Michigan, where disfavor with Biden’s handling with the war is at its highest, purportedly pro-Israel billboards have for weeks trumpeted Harris’s commitment to Israel and featured her Jewish husband Doug Emhoff; online ads with the same message have also targeted these constituencies. Meanwhile, the same PAC has also funded mailers sent to Jewish households in Pennsylvania declaring that Harris not pro-Israel enough.

Pro-Trump PACs back more misleading ads about Harris and Israel in final bid for swing-state voters - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

The above article also discusses how this was not merely the effort of one PAC, but that multiple PACs were engaged in this sort of disinformation.

However - I think I understand what you mean, and Harris should have immediately broken with Biden on Palestine. Make no mistake, I’m not thinking of this as some sort of dispassionate politics-as-baseball strategy.
The right thing to do was and always will be to stop a genocide.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 22 hours ago

The right thing to do was and always will be to stop a genocide.

THANK YOU. Few enough ever think about doing the actual 'right thing to do' anymore.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I don't like shitty conspiracies but this really felt like they were working really hard to try to lose the election.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 6 days ago (3 children)

No, I really thought trump was trying to lose. Saying people in ohio eat cats and dogs, and he has no plan, just concepts of a plan. I really thought he was throwing the election.

I made one mistake. I forgot that this country is full of morons.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

I made one mistake.

well, then all this is your fault because you were told MANY times to, "make no mistake".

Everyone, I found out the person to blame for the election results, its this effin guy right here.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 22 hours ago

Aw shucks....

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago

I thing Trump was trying to loose and his handlers were trying their best to stop him.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago

I wanted to bet on a Trump win so bad on the premise that Americans are not to be trusted ever, but couldn't quite stoop to it.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 days ago (2 children)

So fucking idiots were idiots, as usual. And they believe they're somehow morally superior while handing Gaza over to Israel in the process. As if Trump and the Republican party was the better option, they care even less about Gaza than the Biden admin.

This is why the Dems and progressive both keep losing everything, too many dumb fucks that think they're making a difference while just making things worse with inaction.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Maybe if Democrats stop taking entire demographics for granted without providing them with anything, they'd win more.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 days ago

Demos like the "won't support any genocide" demo.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

You know, while I am a fan of choosing the lesser evil, when the "lesser evil" is genocide, maybe it is time to re-consider the approach.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Their response was to avoid it, resulting in the worst option by default.

It was clear this would be the result. Choosing not to vote was the worst option to choose both objectively, and morally. And considering the entire supposed reasoning was moral, they failed spectacularly.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

Choosing not to vote was the worst option to choose both objectively, and morally.

Strictly speaking, assuming Democrats care about winning elections, it is not true.

Sure, you get the worst option for one or two terms, but you would hopefully force the Democratic party to reform and stop supporting Genocides in the long term.

This is why I hate when people try to shift the blame on voters. This was 100% the Democrats election to loose, and they did.

You can't really change the voters, so what is the point of complaining about them? You can change the party to allow it to win the next time. Blaming the voters is just distracting from that.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

Impactful. Thanks 🙏🏻

[–] [email protected] -3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Sure, you get the worst option for one or two terms, but you would hopefully force the Democratic party to reform and stop supporting Genocides in the long term.

I'm not entirely convinced that the USA still has terms.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

If ye mean it as a meme, then yes, haha.

If you are actually worried, then don't be. However much capitalists may suck, they won't allow a dictator who could confiscate their wealth to take over. It's against their own self-interest. And they have enough influence over media, politicians and probably some assassins to remove Trump if needed. That's why communist democracies turn authoritarian pretty much on day one, while the very capitalistic ones tend to survive.

If Trump was actually smart and competent, maybe there would be a risk, but as is, I am not worried.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 days ago (2 children)

On the other hand, I bet they would love to have a dictator THEY can control. Trump is very easy to manipulate. It's much cheaper to give Trump a bribe than to spend billions influencing the voters. Take Elon Musk, for example. He spent 44 billion dollars to control Twitter, and it didn't even work right. The platform is dying. 44 billion to control the internet's agora, and then he broke it with his incompetence. On the other hand, 277 million to buy Trump is a fantastic investment.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 22 hours ago

The problem comes when you have to beat someone elses bribe. Good luck. In that sense a bribeable president is peak capitalism.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

And it is infinitely safer to pay off the next president as well, then to remove the safeguards that protect them from government power.

No, if anything, I expect them using Trump to rig the next election even more, so they can control future puppet presidents even better. Not in obvious ways like ballot stuffing. But campaign donations, access to information, etc. And rotate the puppets out before they can get too powerful and dangerous.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I think we've exhausted this part of the conversation. We don't know what's going to happen next term, because it's in the future. We've both made good arguments. Whether democracy will continue to exist is uncertain.

I don't think the non-voters should have bet their entire country on a gamble like that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

I am not saying that they should have, but it is telling Biden was willing to risk it, since they made their stance clear during the primaries.

PS: Also if you believe that capitalists would be willing to go along with it, it would also make a lot of congressmen, senators and judges redundant. So they may also have something to say about that, even if they are Republican.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 4 days ago

I thought we were talking about the voters. Just two days ago, you suggested we reconsider voting for the lesser evil.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago (3 children)

It's doubtable this poll has uncovered something that countless other post-election polls have missed.

It's more likely that the pollster is biased. This is the first sentence of About section of the pollster's website: "Palestinians, like all people, are entitled to live in freedom and with their human rights respected. Yet, for too long, the US government has funded and enabled Israel’s denial of Palestinian human rights."

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 days ago (1 children)

But other polls have found similar results?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

I dug into the survey and it appears they intentionally skewed the results by the word choice and order of the questions.

For example: "5. Do you [favor or oppose] the Biden administration approving taxpayer-funded weapons and other military support to Israel, even if the U.S. government has no control over whether the Israeli military uses those weapons on innocent civilians in Gaza, or are you undecided?"

The wording in that question will predispose a respondent to view the Biden administration negatively, even if that wasn't the main reason that a respondent chose not to vote.

Worse, they asked that question before they asked about sitting out the election, predisposing the respondent to view that topic as more significant in their decision to sit out the election.

If the purpose of a poll was to figure out the reason for not voting, this is not a scientific way to do it. It predictably would skew results as it appears to have done.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago

Thanks for digging into it - yeah, that's definitely not a neutral way to phrase things.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

Made me look too! Holy shit those are loaded questions.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

The other polls which had Kamala leading Trump?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Imagine thinking that Palestinians being human beings is indicative of a bias. Yikes....

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Yes, it does smell of bias when we're talking about statistics and polling. Why would you even mention all that in such a story? It should be a dry, here's the facts kinda story.

"We believe $X and here's the polling to prove it."

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

The problem with that is that the actual polling questions did not indicate any such bias nor did they try to ask leading questions in the way that you're implying.

News coverage always has a political viewpoint to express (including the """centrist""" slop that often gets peddaled as "unbiased"), and so yeah, you'll find such ""bias"" as maybe we shouldn't be engaging in a horrific genocide from progressive news outlets. But the polling questions were pretty direct and clear in a non-leading way.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Do you [favor or oppose] the Biden administration approving taxpayer-funded weapons and other military support to Israel, even if the U.S. government has no control over whether the Israeli military uses those weapons on innocent civilians in Gaza, or are you undecided?

How much do you [agree or disagree] with the following statement: The $18 billion in weapons the U.S. provided to Israel over the last year, funded by taxpayer dollars, would be better spent lowering costs and supporting Americans dealing with inflation and struggling to afford basics like housing and healthcare.

These questions inform the participant of basic facts about the DNC's strategy on Israel. So this survey provides a great look at what non-voters think of Harris when they're informed about the issues. But it doesn't actually tell us why they didn't vote, because it doesn't give us any information on how non-voters think when they're uninformed. And many non-voters were uninformed. This would be an excellent survey in a perfect world where people understand the consequences of their decisions, and it's a terrible survey in a world where people have no clue what their leaders are doing with their tax dollars.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Trump isn't pro Palestine. How on earth are people so dumb.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

All Harris needed to do was change her position on that to win. How on earth was she so dumb?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

How on earth do you think an american president will position themselves on Israël ever? There is zero chance one will go against, zero. And who ever believe Trump would not support Israël is delusional.

It really makes me wonder why on earth a democrat would ever not vote democrat in your current system. Sure she is far from ideal. But trump???

Its like the french not voting macron and letting lepen passs !

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago

I know this has been debated in detail, and you probably understand this but dont agree with it, but to explain one more time, many people see a difference between personally acting in support of an immoral action in order to to game toward a better outcome as less desirable than not acting at all.

As an example: if the choice is for them to participate in murdering 10 people or murdering 100-- with no other option given, the only option for them is to sit down and not make either choice, and let the chips fall where they may. The difference for them lies in part to them having to actively participate in these murders. For christians, "thou shalt not kill" doesn't have caveats. Many other religions and beliefs also have something similar.

You probably disagree and would say refusing to kill the 10 puts the blood of 90 on their hands, but their personal morality doesnt allow them to make that choice.
I do get your point.

Hate them, call them stupid..dirty hippies... whatever. But there are enough of them on the dem side that the dems cant afford to ignore their votes.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 days ago

Nor is biden, nor is kamala, how are you so simple minded? If trump hating netenyahu is enough to stop the war or give a moment of ceasefire for aid then he already did more then biden ever did. Also the bill drafted for ceasefire under trump does allow Palestinans to return to all of Gaza which is something the Israeli government does not want as they are colonizing demons who in 75 years have absolutely destroyed the pretty solid 3000 year old reputation of the jews.