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‘I hate Democrats, but I love Abdul’: voters who left over Gaza return for progressive push
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2026
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People like that helped get Trump elected. Harris was far from the ideal candidate, but she would have been far and away better than Trump.
You win with the electorate you have, not the one you want.
People are idiots. Expect this.
If it’s this easy to win them back and the Democrats couldn’t even bother, who’s the real idiot? They thought they could discard these votes and found out they couldn’t. Figure out how to continue treating them like people with understandable sorrow about the genocide in Gaza, or keep losing 🤷♂️
There can be more than one idiot in a given situation
Words to live by
there are idiots, and then there are idiots with power. i never understand the people who protect the idiots with power and blame the idiots without.
"Vote for me cause if you don't then you're an idiot"
Good luck with that bro. No wonder genocide supporting Democrats keep losing
You've hit the nail on the head for why so many people have been upset and frustrated with how terrible the dems are. They'd rather lose votes to stay center than do anything that keeps voters voting for them
It's the USA, there is Right and Far Right, you've never ever had anything close to a left wing.
From were I stand (in Europe), it looks more like Hard Right (hardcore Neoliberals) and Fascists.
Mind you, here in Europe it's also shifted in that direction, just not as much as the US (except in the UK and Germany)
What makes you think they were genuinely trying to win? They have no interest in changing the status quo. It's been very good to them.
And that’s why they were genuinely trying to win. Centrist Dems are all about the status quo. This isn’t the status quo.
didn’t seem to be bothering them that much. the democrats have shown no onus to fight for the status quo. now progressives? watch them sweat to stop that from happening. the progressives already won in a land slide? watch as they keep spending money and time and effort into undermining him at every turn.
trump removes person hood from immigrants? thats a stern letter. fuck the democraric party
Everyone is an idiot. The Dems, the voters, the pollsters, the Republicans, everyone. Me included.
Here's something I've wondered about for a while now: Why do some voters have to be assiduously courted, and it's a failure of the candidate if she doesn't win them over, while for other voters the blame falls on the voters if they don't fall in line and vote for the candidate?
Because that's literally the job of a politician running for office.
Because of tribalist authoritarianism and gaslighting.
It's much easier to get away with ignoring the wants and needs of your constituency when you convince them that it's about teams, not policies.
This right here.
Mine was a loaded question. After decades of this stuff, it's entirely clear to me that the difference is that Democrats do not have policy to offer many voters, so all that they have to fall back on is team boosterism. If Harris did have something substantive to offer these Michigan voters, she and her supporters would've offered it.
But they didn't, so all that they had left is what we see: Blame and derision.
The nice thing about blame is it's an infinite resource. We can always make more of it. That's why I blame the politicians and the voters.
Didn't the DNC send Bill Clinton to Michigan and when confronted about the lackluster response of the DNC against the genocide, he started telling the attendees that it's Israel's right to the whole thing and they were there first? To a room full of Arab Americans?
https://truthout.org/articles/bill-clinton-sparks-outrage-for-racist-comments-on-gaza-at-harris-rally/
From an outsider looking in,
Trump may have been necessary to get America on the right track. Had they voted Kamala in, things wouldn’t change. She even said that on the campaign trail.
If you boil it down to the barest of reasons, Trump was voted in because people wanted change. He’s a liar, a scumbag, and a rapist, and as much as you and I think the other side is dumb as fuck for voting him in, both sides realize that change is needed.
Now that Trump has been allowed to fuck things up so bad it seems that Americans are actually learning how their political system works and doing what they should have been doing all along. (Mainly voting in primaries, from my POV.)
I hope the upcoming elections reel him in (Preferably all the way to jail) and you guys can actually get people working to improve the country. Keep it up, Americans.
He was also already president from 2017-2021. Apparently everyone just forgot what a fucking disaster he was back then.
He had more people to say no to him back then, so the bad effects he had on non-politically engaged voters were not as obvious.
Turns out Harris is a bad candidate
And Americans are stupid.
Both these things can be true at the same time.
Harris also received 48% of the popular vote. She didn't win, but that kind of turnout doesn't make a candidate a bad candidate. There just happens to be a lot of Americans that think a felon rapist pedophile with one failed presidency under his belt was a better option.
Harris would have been far better than Trump is a bit line saying "Joe, the car thief, is better than Mike, the serial mass murderer"
If Harris had won, the Democratic party would have kept in it's corrupt, corporate minion state.
A silver lining in the Trump disaster is that the Demicrat establishment is being shaken.
EDIT: I was going to correct "Demicrat", but considering that "demi" means half, I'm going to keep it that way.
First don't muddy the waters with things like "far from ideal;" we know what she was: a genocidal piece of shit. To some people there's a maximum number of pictures of dismembered children after which these things don't matter anymore.
On the other hand, from an electoral strategy standpoint it's not like weathering the Trump storm is going to mean victory for democracy; MAGA is ultimately a product of current living conditions, and Trump is nothing more than the demagogue they coalesced around. They're only going to get worse until either democracy collapses or someone (probably a leftist) changes things for the better. Time is on their side, not yours. Vote blue no matter who is only an optimal strategy if you refuse to think about anything beyond the next four years. These people made the price of their vote abundantly clear as part of an organized large movement; they did everything right and the Democrats refused to listen.
I agree, but now it's two years later, and that same attitude with get similar results. The democrats need to do way better than just "not as bad as trump".
exactly fuck people for voting again.
I voted kamala, but I am not ignorant enough to blame non voters for this mess we're in. I punch up, preferably not sideways and never down.
We’ll see how this all pans out.
I agree and was furious with those who kept that stance. I respected them still.
We would be better today but the progressives and DemSocs could be the change our country has been truly needing. If Harris won it wouldn’t be as bad now but it would all be very much status quo since the 80s.
We have an opportunity because of the bullshit we’re dealing with.
We shall see.
I do think it's a bit ludicrous that much conflict in the Threadiverse stems from discussions about Israel and Palestine when the vast majority of users are pro-Palestine in one form or another, merely having differing views in the context of being pro-Palestine.
Far less divides the users here than many might think. People letting those differences get to their heads and not being willing to engage with each other civilly is harming the platform.