The democrats’ message this cycle was literally, “Trump doesn’t actually want to do anything about immigration, he just wants to campaign on it. We’re the ones who are actually going to build the wall, he’s all talk,” and now they’re all suprisied that they lost a bunch of Latino votes. Who could’ve predicted this?

When did any tankie claim that Trump was “the sane one?”

Also calling for a ceasefire while unconditionally arming Israel is like telling a mass shooter you disapprove of what they’re doing while you hand them another clip.

• Obviously, the main reason for record turnout in 2020 was COVID.

• Biden actually has decent political instincts and has actually won elections before. Kamala didn’t even have to pass a primary and bombed out of the one she did participate in in 2020. She was “untested” to put it mildly.

• The economic situation was different.

• Regardless of to what degree he was responsible, under Biden the US got entangled in foreign conflicts in Palestine and Ukraine.

• It’s not that there are 10 million commies that liked Biden but not Harris, it’s that us commies believe that you can win over the working class by appealing to material interests.

• Biden didn’t campaign with fucking Dick Cheney

Oh, Iranian history is a special interest of mine, if you express the slightest interest in it…

The roots of it go back to the 1800’s, when the Qajar dynasty were trying to maintain exorbitant lifestyles on the backs of an extremely poor and undeveloped country, so their solution, rather than developing the economy to increase long-term tax revenue, was instead to basically hold clearance sales of the entire country. The Reuter concession is an almost unbelievable example of it. They tried to sell essentially the entire country’s economy to the guy who founded Reuters news: trains, trams, roads, forests, mines, canals, irrigation systems, telegraph systems, mills, factories, workshops, and even the national bank - in exchange for cash in the shah’s private bank account. It was so bad that even the colonial powers of Britain and Russia said it was too much and wouldn’t allow it.

The people were so pissed off about this sort of behavior that after they sold off tobacco rights to the British in 1890, there was a widespread boycott of tobacco, possibly the most successful boycott in history encompassing people across all of society, with a major religious leader even issuing a fatwa against violating the boycott, and going all the way up to women in the shah’s own harem participating in it, forcing the shah to break the deal. The success of this mass action, combined with dissatisfaction with the shah selling out the country, led people to rise up in protest and start demanding things like a constitution and parliament. They even got the shah to sign off on it, and they brought in an American named Morgan Shuster to reform the tax code and root out loopholes and corruption. But when the shah died, his successor had other ideas, and he called in Britain and Russia, who were making quite a bit of money off loopholes and corruption, to come in and shell parliament.

Fast forward to WWI. Once again backed by Britain and Russia, the Ottomans invade Iran, and conduct the Armenian genocide. At the same time, there’s a major famine, and the Spanish Flu is running rampant. When the dust settles, the old dynasty is gone, and a new shah comes to power, backed by Britain: Reza Shah Pahlavi. He attempted to push back against the oil deal but the British stonewalled him, and he lasted until WWII, when the Allies invaded to establish a strategic supply line between Britain and the USSR and to ensure Iranian oil didn’t end up in the Nazi’s hands instead of theirs. Afterwards, Britain forced him to abdicate and put his son in power, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi.

The new shah also attempted to renegotiate the oil deal, and again was stonewalled. British advisors hand-picked prime ministers for the shah to appoint, in the mostly powerless parliament, but even then they stonewalled their own prime ministers when they attempted to negotiate. Public sentiment grew increasingly heated, and the advisors sent word back that the situation was reaching a boiling point, but still the British wouldn’t move an inch. Finally, the shah became more afraid of a revolution than he was of the British, and he appointed Mohammad Mossadegh as prime minister, with a huge wave of popular support calling for nationalization of the industry.

Still, Mossadegh attempted to negotiate, and the US under Truman attempted to intervene as a mediator to prevent a crisis. But the Iranians had been struggling against British colonialism for a very long time, and the British still wouldn’t budge. The oil industry was nationalized, and the British responded with a naval blockade that shut down Iran’s economy and caused rampant poverty. Churchill approached Truman asking him to use the newly formed CIA to oust Mossadegh, and Truman told him to go to hell, that Mossadegh was a legitimate democratic leader and that the CIA was supposed to be about stopping communism not enforcing colonialism, and that the British brought this on themselves. There was no real animosity between Iran and America on either side at this point, the Iranians saw America as well-intentioned but naive, while Americans saw Iran as sympathetic but stubborn.

But Truman was replaced by Eisenhower, and Eisenhower was not acquainted with the background of the conflict, and Churchill and Alan Dulles were both pushing him to do it. Churchill changed tacts from talking about protecting Britain’s property to warning that Mossadegh might end up aligning with the USSR, and also saying that he wouldn’t support the formation of NATO or the Korean War unless Eisenhower gave him Iran. So he signed off on it.

They took over nearly every media outlet in the country, they bribed anyone who would take it, from politicians to vote counters to religious leaders, the hired protesters to march against the government and false flag “pro-government” protesters to go around wrecking things. Just before the coup, the American ambassador called up Mossadegh and told him a false story, that he was worried he would have to shut down the embassy because Mossadegh’s supporters kept calling to give death threats, even to children at the embassy. Moved by the story, and eager to improve relations with the US, Mossadegh sent out a radio announcement telling all of his supporters to stay home and stop causing trouble. That’s when the CIA made its move and deposed him, and no one was there to come to his aid.

They covered up their involvement for decades, until it was far enough back in history that people wouldn’t care that they could finally admit it. That was the first democratic government they overthrew, and once the precedent had been set, they repeated around the world, Iran on behalf of BP, Guatemala on behalf of Chiquita, all across South America in Operation Condor, and so many more.

Oh god, apologism for the fascist shah, take it back to Reddit.

The the government Iran had in the 70’s was the result of a CIA coup to oust the progressive leader Mohammad Mossadegh who became prime minister with overwhelming popular support and reclaimed control of Iran’s oil from the British colonizers who had made an extremely exploitative deal with a different authoritarian dynasty before the country had any form of democracy - a deal, which despite being extremely favorable to them, they still consistently broke, lying about how much oil they were taking. This coup crushed Iran’s fledgling democratic movement and reforms, and the shah proceeded to use secret police to hunt down and exterminate his political opponents, primarily leftists. In order to give the country the appearance of modernization, he banned women from wearing traditional religious garb. In other words, even then the government was still controlling how women dressed. This shit is falling for decades old propaganda from an awful government.

Because the shah was so successful in suppressing and killing leftists, when he fell out of favor as a Western puppet and lost foreign support, guess which faction remained that had the power to take advantage of the situation? The Islamic fundamentalists. The modern Iranian state didn’t just spring up from nowhere, it came about as a result of the actions of the CIA and the shah.

I would love nothing more than for this to be true and to hit that one RFK fan we have on lemmy with it, but the article doesn’t really give much evidence to support the title.

Too late lmao

At that point, why not just say, “Harris lost because Trump didn’t drop out of the race and endorse her?” Completely useless analysis.

I agree with what MisterScruffy said. There were things that actually were within the democrats control that they could have done differently that would have allowed them to win. Blaming external factors outside of anyone’s control that you have no solution for addressing is completely unproductive, and just an excuse.

So, if that’s why the democrats lost, and there’s nothing that can be done to address it without being Rupert Murdoch, then are the democrats just destined to lose forever?

Then Hitler somehow convinced the center right President to grant him powers

Class interests are how. Hitler came to power by promising big business interests that he would crush labor unions and socialists and promote the interests of capitalists, which he largely did. The term “privatization” was first used to describe the Nazi economy. Many of these rich Nazi collaborators survived and thrived under the Nazis (so long as they weren’t part of a minority), and also survived its fall. The company that manufactured Zyklon B, for example, eventually became part of the company now known as Bayer. The rich accepted fascism as a calculated risk because the country was in crisis and there was a risk of communists coming to power and redistributing their wealth.

Cool, so what’s your plan for addressing bias in the media?

Removed by mod

Removed by mod

First of all I live in Illinois, so my vote doesn’t matter at all. Second, Harris would’ve needed a lot more that 0.3% to win, she lost PA by a solid 2.0%. Even if you do the unrealistic thing y’all do of adding third party votes to your candidate’s total, you’re not going to have enough to win.

But none of that is really relevant. The people who helped Trump win were the people who voted for him. I didn’t help either candidate win because I didn’t vote for either candidate. I helped Kamala exactly as much as I helped Trump.

I don’t really have an interest in continuing this purely semantic argument where I consider myself to be objectively correct about the meaning of terminology.

There’s definitely some truth to that. The media gave Kamala front-runner status in the 2020 primary and she blew it so hard she dropped out before a single vote was cast. If we’re being as generous as possible, we might describe her as, “unproven.” There was never any real indication she had decent political instincts or could draw people in, and it’s unlikely that she would have won in a competitive primary. Internal criticism is necessary to root out ineffective strategies (and candidates), but there was never a time when that was really permissible in this cycle.

Tammy Baldwin is looking set to win Wisconsin, and Elissa Slotkin is ahead by a hair in Michigan, so no, that narrative is dead in the water.

It’s not really all that complicated. The Democrats represent the status quo. The status quo sucks. The Republicans present themselves as an alternative to the status quo. So, people vote Republican.

All the centrist messaging just makes it worse. The Republicans can explain why things suck by scapegoating the poor and marginalized. But the Democrats won’t call out the rich and powerful who are the actual reason things suck, so instead they just try to tell people that things don’t suck at all. They “reach across the aisle” to people like Dick Cheney who are clearly part of the political establishment which only serves to help Trump present himself as an outsider. They adopt all these right-wing positions on immigration, the military, etc, but the people that appeals to already have a party waiting on them hand and foot, giving them exactly what they want. And all the bad shit he does doesn’t matter to them because they believe in lesser evilism and hate the establishment.

Of course, Trump is part of the billionaire class and isn’t any sort of real alternative to the existing system, but as long as Republicans are able to paint themselves that way, and are the only “alternative” game in town, people are going to turn to them when they dislike the way things are going, no matter how shitty they are.

I felt surprised and confused in 2016 when Trump won, but it’s been 8 years. It’s long past time to start figuring out where the Trump phenomenon came from.

So we’re back to this idea that there is fundamentally no way for me to hold my position or defend it without you calling it bad faith and accusing me of being a secret Republican, regardless of anything I say or don’t say. Any disagreement, any criticism of Harris or Biden whatsoever, is a “Republican talking point,” and I’m expected to craft this completely delusional worldview where I ignore all their faults rather than acknowledging reality.

Completely ridiculous.

“Insane leaps of mental gymnasics,” like, “Doing nothing has no impact on the election.”

As opposed to “logic,” like, “Doing nothing is a +0 which is neither an increase nor a decrease except also it is a decrease because it’s not an increase and not increasing is the same as decreasing because zero doesn’t exist.”

Tell you what, if doing nothing counts as helping someone, then rest assured that I’ll give Kamala my “help.”