Right now I think it would be wise to hammer on the DNC’s incompetence and demand the leadership be replaced. People need to lose faith in it before anything else can rise up - whether or not they mean to be controlled opposition, they’re having the effect of being one.

Legitimize people’s legitimate concerns, and provide context where you feel like they’re coming at it from a reactionary angle. Give them the bigger picture - the bigger problem. Use your intersectional knowledge to tie their concerns into leftist concerns.

Potentially even talk about dual power and how communities need to start taking more initiatives for themselves in the face of climate change, economic instability, food deserts, etc. Push against financial solutions for such initiatives that would require going into debt or giving special rights to investors. Try to pitch for solutions that get lots of people mobilized and organized instead. Contrast that to playing “follow the leader” under corporate political parties for so many years.

What was so hard to understand? You won because trumps economy was shit, he won because bidens economy was shit? “Don’t they remember it?” no, Americans are brainwashed into having short memory. That is the reason why you brought chaneys to your cabinet. “are people OK with prosecution on minorities for cheaper eggs?” yes, Americans are brainwashed to being selfish. This is the reason why you voted for a party that does genocide. This was a destructive loss, any serious Democrats should demand mass resignation from dem leaders. They wasted 1 billion donation money of yours to fail. Also kick warmonger never trump neocons from your party their votes are not worth losing anti war votes.

I wrote something up two days after the election in the middle of a calculus class that I was gonna post on c/effort, but ultimately decided wasn’t good enough, so I’ll go ahead and toss it in here if anyone wants to read it. I’m hoping to expand the whole thing and focus on comparing each party’s vote totals from 2020 and 2024 in each state that flipped, maybe with some analysis of demographic and polling data to try to suss out why things actually went the way they did, but honestly who knows if I’ll ever get around to it. I kinda just want to leave this somewhere it’s possible someone may read it, but hopefully won’t get me yelled at for posting lib wonk shit when I could definitely be putting my energy into more productive places. I know, you know, we all know the democratic party ain’t gonna learn shit from this. I just needed to purge myself of some arguments that were building up in my head after reading so many reactions from liberals that displayed zero critical thinking. My better idea is to scrap this whole thing and start collecting studies on if Biden’s Post-Covid Economic Miracle even really happened, and then writing something really robust responding to the claim that the USA is currently the strongest economy in on Earth or whatever bullshit they’re trying to say to make themselves feel better. Maybe that can dovetail into a truncated version of election analysis as a supporting argument.

Either way, I can finally push this specific essay out of my mind. It’s not that good, but I still think it has some strong points. Oh well.

call it agitprop the way this propaganda agitates liberals into ordering the mass deportation of immigrants

I have a new effortpost! I made a Substack to put it on for liberal consumption. Let me know what you think. And where should I share this?

Even the “Winners” of Bidenomics Are Angry. They’re Right to Be!

There’s some simple agitprop you can do especially on fearful libs, point out how various economic or progressive things didn’t improve, for example personal econ situation remaining similar, hate crime going up etc, and point out wistful thinking is just that, action needs to be taken for improvement. Don’t go deep into just point out some things. This works on chuds if you mention how the supposed progressiveness of Obama wasn’t really there and then the supposed econ improvements under Trump weren’t of his creation (if spicy and they seem like the sort). Try to meet them with what they’re familiar with.

I did some agripop at work to poor randos that dared bring up politics and coworkers alike since my health beat me so soundly I couldn’t even pretend to be ‘detached nonpolitical’, got no energy for that. I was really amused how a lot of basic econ concepts, the failure of lib progressiveness, some worker rights was alien to people. It was like people had just heard of it 200yrs ago shit. Overton window is so far right any actual left is some non-Euclidean geometry.

With the Dems having become Republican Lite, people of that political persuasion will just pick real Republicans. Left-libs will be seeking something new. People who hate-voted for Trump are looking for change too. It seems the Democratic party implosion will leave a power vacuum and an opportunity. How do we leftists take advantage of that beyond “read theory”, organize and “adopt a Lib” as one Hexbear put it ITT. Those are all important but how could this play out? What is even possible given the anemic state of the left in the US. Broad stroke thoughts? (If there is a better thread or comm for this question I can move it.)

A friend sent me this earlier https://www.reddit.com/r/houstonwade/comments/1gnwsv0/they_cheated/#lightbox

When you run on the status quo, and the status quo sucks, people are gonna turn to whoever manages to present themselves as an alternative.

When you run to the right, and the people who like right-wing policies already have a party giving them the policies they want, they’re not gonna switch parties, and you’re just going to alienate the parts of your base/coalition that are affected by those policies.

Not an effortpost but I think those are two simple, straightforward responses to anyone being like, “How could this possibly happen?”

I’m also running around countering any “she lost because she’s a woman” takes with with Tammy Baldwin in WI and Elissa Slotkin in MI winning despite their states going to Trump, which are two invaluable rhetorical data points, imo.

I’ll start by just saying that the classic response to the election results remains timeless:

If democrats were serious about protecting the things you cared so much about, they would have taken the election more seriously than nominating a candidate who so clearly had dementia that they were eventually forced to pull him from the race. They only pulled him from the race just months before the election because his mental decline was so obvious that it was completely indefensible, and that’s after he did untold damage in both voter turnout and campaign time.

1. The DNC learned nothing from 2016. It is the definition of irrationality to do the same thing twice and expect different outcomes.

2. Bernie could garner huge crowds and massive support by campaigning on the basis of policy that has mass appeal, such as universal healthcare. Kamala chose not to do this because she prioritised business as usual over stopping Trump.

3. You say “things will get worse under Trump”. That’s true. But things got worse under Biden/Harris after Trump’s first term as president - environmental policy, the border camps, reproductive rights, trans rights, cop city, the genocide of Palestinians etc. So when you say “we must vote for Kamala or things will get worse” that line of reasoning is at best unconvincing and at worst it betrays the 4-year state of amnesia you have lived in because you are so politically detached from the consequences of your voting.

4. Telling people to protect democracy—the system where you vote for the candidate who best represents your political values—by voting for a person who in no way represents your political values in order to save democracy is tortured logic.

5. No, I’m not an accelerationist. Me advocating for people not to vote for Kamala Harris is not an accelerationist position because we should not be giving a mandate for a genocide, climate change, and civil rights-eroding accelerationist by voting for them.

6. How many delegates did Harris win in the last primaries? How many did she win in the primaries to get her to run for president this time? Is this what you claim as your democracy?

7. When I list a number of legitimate grievances with Kamala Harris and Joe Biden’s regime and issues with Kamala’s election platform, none of which have a single thing to do with her race or gender, and you respond by calling me racist or misogynistic it drives home how little you are willing to listen to my political concerns and how intransigent your favoured party is. When you act this way and then tell me that people have to vote for Kamala in order to push her left while you yourself are unwilling to even acknowledge the fact that Kamala’s platform has serious issues, it signals to me that there will be no shifting left on anything. I already knew this fact but you have done an exceptional job of inadvertently teaching other people this lesson.

8. When entering into negotiations with someone, it’s a uniquely terrible tactic to hand over your one state-sanctioned bargaining chip before making even one single demand.

9. You are chasing the DNC to the right and one day you will wake up and wonder to yourself “How did I end up all the way over here?” I’m not following you into that marsh but you’re welcome to go into it yourself, just don’t get upset at me when I point out what you’re heading into and don’t get angry when I refuse to blindly follow you.

10. Kamala Harris is the only thing that can stop fascism. Kamala Harris cannot do anything to protect reproductive rights, trans rights, Palestinian lives, the lives of Marcellus Williams and Robert Robertson etc. because she is powerless to do anything about it 🫠

11. Kamala Harris said she would “follow the law” regarding trans people. She was angling to become the primary lawmaker in the US. Not only does this show a lack of whatever libs care about like “leadership” but it shows how cowardly and detestable she is because she understands the law and she is willing to follow it but not when it comes to things like international law, only when it’s laws that she can use to hide behind while trans people are subjected to further oppression through legislation that strips them of rights.

12. Historically, fascism has never been stopped at the ballot box. You being convinced that this is possible does not sway my opinion on any matter aside from my estimation of your political awareness and your ability to achieve change.

13. You had four years (eight+ if you count Trump’s regime and the lead-up to it in this calculation) to “stop fascism”. What did you do in this period of time? Did you push Biden and Kamala to adopt policies which have mass support? Did you do anything except go to back to brunch?

14. When you accuse me of not organising irl, when you say that I’m not doing anything:

• I’m not about to dox myself

• I’m not going to make a laundry list of the things that I have done w/organising and activism just to impress (?) you, especially not when you’ve already told me that I haven’t done anything

• It’s a huge self-report and it’s obvious that you’re projecting

• You alienate others by telling them “I do not recognise your efforts and everything that you have done is unimportant in my estimation”

15. You aren’t entitled to others’ votes. Stop pretending that you are.

16. We aren’t splitting the so-called left, Kamala Harris did that all by herself.

17. You have no red lines. There is nothing that could make you not support Kamala Harris and we know it. Telling people to drop their standards and ignore their conscience to vote for Kamala is a fatal strategy and you killed her campaign by deploying it.

18. Selective invoking of people of colour to advocate for Kamala was ridiculous and disgustingly tokenistic. Yes, Angela Davis is smarter than I am. Telling me that I’m stupider than her and so I should take my political cues from her with regards to electoralism is a losing argument and it’s low-key ableist became you’re arguing that the person who lacks intelligence also has a commensurate lack of political virtue. Historically speaking, very intelligent people have had absolutely atrocious politics. Also people like Thomas Sowell and Clarence Thomas are almost certainly a lot smarter than I am. It would be wrong of me not to defer to their superior intellect and their politics, isn’t that right?

19. You say that democracy is going to be strangled in its crib and that fascism has come to town. You are maybe posting about this online in your echo chamber and that’s it. You do not take politics seriously, not even your own, yet you demand that I take your politics more seriously than you yourself do. There are things that I am doing right now to avert this trend in politics. There are things that I would do if fascism proper had seized power, none of which I would post about online. We are not the same. Enjoy your brunch though.

20. Almost all of your arguments for voting for Kamala Harris (aside from the “it will stop Trump” argument which, in retrospect, appears to be a dismal failure) also apply to reasons for voting for Trump. “You can push them left”, “By voting we will get a seat at the table”, “Voting third party or not voting at all is a wasted vote”, “We have to vote this way to protect the country”, “Politics is about comprise - you cannot expect them to be your perfect political candidate”, and whatever hold-your-nose-and-vote arguments you trot out. Did you ever stop to ask yourself why it is that you do not find these arguments for voting Trump to be convincing?

21. Last time Trump got elected you were brutally vindictive. You took glee in the thought of people in red states and marginalised groups suffering due to policy and things like natural disasters, regardless of their politics or how they chose to vote. You were excited to tell these people that they were going to get deported and put into concentration camps. You will do it again this time too because you have learned nothing. November came and these people you targeted with your vicious schadenfreude remembered. They aren’t going to forget how effortlessly you abandoned them and how you wished the worst suffering and ill-fate upon them.

22. You said that a non-vote or a 3rd party vote is a vote for Trump. We have been shouting from the rooftops that Kamala Harris is fundamentally unwilling and incapable of stopping Trump. History vindicates this position; Trump managed to win the popular vote while Harris underperformed by millions of votes, even compared to Joe Biden. Thus your support for Kamala Harris was therefore support for Donald Trump’s presidency. Congratulations on getting the candidate which you campaigned so hard to get elected.

23. I don’t care about the US. America must die and if Trump is to be its undertaker then I am relieved to hear it. What you have done is to accelerate the destruction of the US. If I were cynical about achieving my political objectives, wouldn’t have said any of the above. If I was an accelerationist I would have been pushing for all of the things that you’ve been pushing for instead of pushing back against them. I would have even gone so far as to furnish your side with more poisoned chalice arguments (I do this with the far right, I exactly know how to do it). Instead I’ve been defending your political project against your own excesses and self-defeating narrow mindedness. You are right in the fact that I am your enemy but you are wrong to oppose me because you are a far greater enemy to yourself than I could ever have the stomach to be. You won’t listen to a word of what I’ve said because you refuse to learn and to reflect.

24. A cynical person might argue that my strategy is to oppose you in the knowledge that this will make you react by becoming more deeply entrenched in your position, encouraging a sort of siege mentality in you, so that you see any criticism or difference of opinion as being an existential political threat that must be eradicated as a means to create more disaffected people to radicalise out of bourgeois democracy. This is not my intent. If things improve for the proles and the marginalised because of what I argue for then that’s a win for my political objectives. However I can’t control your actions and if you choose to respond by taking a hatchet to your precious liberal democracy then, likewise, that’s a win for my political objectives. Which way, western man?

A softer list I made on a Lemmy.ml thread that got a good amount of momentum and very little pushback on what liberals should do in the coming years, a mini What is to be Done?

1. Get organized. Join a Leftist org, find solidarity with fellow comrades, and protect each other. The Dems will not save you, it is up to the Workers to protect themselves. The Party for Socialism and Liberation and Freedom Road Socialist Organization both organize year round, every year, because the battle for progress is a constant struggle, not a single election. See if there is a chapter near you, or start one! Or, see if there’s an org you like more near you and join it, the point is that organizing is the best thing any leftist can do.

2. Read theory. A good primer is Blackshirts and Reds. It will help contextualize what fascism is, what causes it, and how to stop it. I can offer a good introductory reading list regarding Marxism if you’d like, but this is a good starting point.

3. Aggressively combat white supremacy, misogyny, queerphobia, and other attacks on marginalized communities. Cede no ground.

4. Be more industrious, and self-sufficient. Take up gardening, home repair, tinkering. It is through practice that you elevate your problem-solving capabilities. Not only will you improve your skill at one subject, but your general problem-solving muscles get strengthened as well. Theory guides practice, which sharpens theory to be reapplied to better practice.

5. Learn self-defense. Get armed, if practical. Be ready to protect yourself and others. The Democrats will not save us, we must save each other.

6. Be persistent. If you feel like a single water driplet against a mountain, think of the Grand Canyon. Oh, how our efforts pile up! With consistency, every rock, boulder, even mountain, can be drilled through with nothing but steady and persistent water droplets.

Here is the reading list I am working on, open to advice! I copy and paste it whenever it is asked for, which has been surprisingly frequent.

Edit: Folded the reading list and this list together, I believe that works better.

A good response whenever you hear someone express shock over voting for Trump:

“If you were able to overlook a genocide and cast a vote for Harris, you already know how a conservative was able to overlook Trump’s extremism and vote for him.”

https://xcancel.com/briebriejoy/status/1854548845381787825#m

One step closer to revolution. Only time will tell if it’s a fascist one

-Can’t blame third parties, the margins are too big and they wouldn’t have mattered in a single state.
-Can’t blame non-voters, voter turnout was relatively high.
-Can’t blame the Electoral College, Trump won the popular vote by almost twice the difference that Hillary has in 2016.
-Can’t blame it on people being ignorant of the ramifications, Trump had already been president for 4 years, he was the presumptive nominee all along, and throughout election season he actually polled higher than his favorability when he left office.
-Can’t blame corruption or voting machines, the last week of polling had Trump ahead, and the exit polling lines up with the results.
The only thing the Democrats have to blame is themselves, for running a bad campaign with an inferior candidate and striking out on a softball.

A close friend of mine was remarking in the last few weeks how the Democrats had pivoted from the “weird” messaging, which seemed to be working, back to the “he’s dangerous and unstable and a threat to democracy” messaging, which they knew from experience did not have much of an effect. In fact, from exit polls, out of people who said “democracy in this country is threatened” or prioritized a candidate’s capacity to do the job, a clear majority supported Trump! This is yet another damning piece of evidence that suggests that Democrats were actively not doing what they could to win the election. Either they prioritized fundraising at the expense of outcome, or they actually threw it.

Also, Allan Lichtman BTFO.