As long as a majority of Americans see themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires, Sanders’ economic policies have less mass appeal and offer more opportunities for attack ads than you think. It needs to be stressed that people voted for Trump not just because he’s a loud-mouthed racist and sexist and they like that, but also because he inherited the (irrational) image of Republicans being better for the economy.

https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/trackers/fame-and-popularity-bernie-sanders

He’s more popular than either Trump or Kamala Harris was, and people seemed to think both of them had enough mass appeal.

The image of Trump exists more or less in a media vacuum, because they can’t say much of anything about either Trump or Kamala. Bernie speaks directly about the economy, in terms that people can understand, and every time he says things, he draws wild amounts of appeal from the both the downtrodden right-voting people and the downtrodden left-voting people, who are otherwise left with nothing but responding to the vague promptings of the media within the vacuum.

Even Trump has to imitate Bernie’s type of speaking, talking about draining the swamp and fighting for the little man, but he can’t do it very well. The media has to fill in the blanks for him. Bernie can do it directly, and from what I’ve seen, it works very well. Do you remember when he went on Joe Rogan and what people’s reaction was to that?

Public opinion on Israel was, even among college kids, very different in 2016, before the current wave of massed anti-Israel propaganda from Russian, Chinese and Iranian bot farms sweeping over social media - and even now most voters (as in: people who actually vote) are still more pro-Israel than pro-Palestine (which makes sense, given how important of a partner Israel is to the US) - and it’s still not high on the list of priorities for most, not even remotely high enough to be mentioned side-by-side with economic policy, which is and almost always has been the number one priority.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/611375/americans-views-israel-palestinian-authority-down.aspx

You might be right. I think a huge factor is that on left-wing social media, which is what you and I use, the Gaza issue was hugely amplified and linked to Biden/Harris, in a way that other issues that were much more favorable were not. For the normie social media, I think they did the same thing with the economy, which also worked gangbusters.

Are you saying that the polls are completely wrong? What are you basing the idea on that the “majority of the people” (reminder: the majority of voters just elected Trump - he actually got the popular vote this time, which is deeply, deeply troubling) have left-leaning positions on the economy and Israel?

I am saying the polls are, in general, completely wrong, yes. I think the most recent election which was anything but the toss-up they predicted is a good example of that.

Bernie’s economics are “left,” but within the spectrum of the average American voter, they aren’t seen as left-only. He doesn’t care much about Democrat branding issues. He cares about people’s pain and how to stick it to the crooks, and he speaks well about it. That’s why the Democrats didn’t like him.

I think a lot of it hinges on what a “moderate” is, in the American political frame of reference, and whether one of those is good enough for most of the American people who don’t live in Washington or NYC to ever have a chance of living a decent life.

You’ve got a point, I guess, about some of it. But I still mostly stick by my statement that Hillary fucked it, when Bernie would have crushed it, on economic policy and sanity in our Israel policy among several other key issues where the majority of people feel very differently than the people in DC and on the news do.

What were her big accomplishments in the senate again?

Here’s Bernie:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernie_Sanders#Legislation_2

I’m not against her because she is blue, or a lady. Those are both good things. I’m against her because she was the last wave of the Clinton-era conservatism that poisoned the Democrats and lost them supporters which led in large part to our current catastrophe. For more, see the source article.

Bernie would have won the fuck out of 2016.

Hillary almost won, and she had essentially nothing to bring beyond being blue, a lady, and continuing the status quo. On top of that she is too fake for politics, which is a high level of fakeness. Bernie would have been an upgrade to everyone who doesn’t work in DC.

How he would have done as president, I have no idea. But he absolutely would have won.

I’m usually the one defending the Democrats against whatever accusation, and I completely approve this message. It’s the 2016 DNC’s fault, and a lot of them are still around making equally bad and corrupt decisions.

The difference being that it takes the standpoint, “We need to take over the Democrats or make something better, so the world doesn’t burn.” It’s the similar but very different standpoint, “It’s the Democratic Party’s fault that the world is burning and I’m not helping until they get better” that is unhelpful.

Edit: https://lemmy.world/post/21721606

There are people who went through the holocaust who compared Trump in 2016 to Hitler. They, if anyone, understand the gravity of the comparison, and made it a little bit carefully. But they said that the way he speaks, the way everyone who is his enemy is an animal who must be destroyed, is very similar.

Well… if it makes you feel better, they’ll get punished, too. I think most of those people are unknowingly living within a very cushy society which has been set up and maintained for them, which is nearing its end, to be replaced by one much more difficult and dangerous.

They’re victims too. They had so much propaganda, and so much bad education, and so many legitimate grievances about a government that since the 1990s at least has mostly forgotten about them.

I try to be kind in my thinking. They might attack and someone might have to defend against them. They might get attacked by the same system they supported in the beginning. A lot of them are going to get hurt, some of them very badly. None of that is good, even a little bit. Some of it “has to happen” and some will just happen because it happens. But I don’t hold any of it against them nearly as much as I do against the people at the top that engineered this whole thing on purpose, with full awareness.

If they are outside the US, actively in contest with it in some kind of zero-sum game, then I don’t have too much to say that’s upset with them.

If they are outside the US and angry about its imperialism, I think they have yet to learn that the US doesn’t have a monopoly on it, and some of the other brands are somehow even worse. But the temporary or permanent collapse of the US might still be a good thing for them, depending.

If they are in the US, and edgelording, then fuck ‘em. I don’t exactly wish on them what’s in store, but there is a certain grim anticipation, I guess, of the day they start to learn about the reality of what they’ve been talking about.

That still doesn’t address the fact that many people were less likely to vote for Harris if she continued to want to arm Israel.

There have always been holocausts going on, somewhere in the world. A lot of times, the US is involved.

For a certain audience, the narrative was that Biden caused inflation and Trump would rescue them and make their economic lives easy. And look at that, they bought it. Even though it was opposite-land bullshit.

For a certain audience, the narrative was that Biden caused the holocaust in Gaza. And look at that, they bought it. There was some validity. But the new thing was that it was hugely important, all over their social media, and Biden was responsible, and it defined his presidency in a way that 100 other things he did failed to do.

It only got presented and spread so widely and presented so singularly as a Democrats-only issue, without acknowledgement that Trump will be ten times worse, a hundred times worse, because that presentation would hurt the Democrats.

There were other narratives in the same way. Immigration, either that Biden was too kind or too mean. Oldness and feebleness. Policing. The truth or falsehood didn’t matter. They were expertly crafted.

And the result? Now, after people bought and acted on them, hook line and sinker?

Buddy just you fucking wait. Gaza will get much worse, of course, but it will barely even register as a major problem, by the time all of this is said and done.

Whoever made the narratives got their fucking money’s worth, and then some.

Edit: It should be said that I think “It’s not the voters’ fault. It’s Harris’s fault that she didn’t earn the votes.” is another of those narratives. You’ve probably seen it a few times today. Why they’re spending effort on pushing that new one, all of a sudden right after the election, I have no idea. It barely matters. But if you take a step back and think, it’s a pretty weird thing to decide is important to say, if you’re trying to do anything other than further depress support for anything left that’s in power, and soothe the consciences of people who might have been involved in this catastrophe from the voter side.

most of the people you have probably argued with online about Harris and genocide probably did in fact hold their nose and vote for Harris

Did you?

“Don’t blame your allies.”

Proceeds to blame his allies, picking out the one wedge issue which the opponents used to greatest effect to split the left in this election.

Nothing in particular that would help anyone pick up the pieces, or figure out what happens now or what to do.

We may see military or militarized police knocking down doors.

We absolutely will. What did you think mass deportations meant?

Do you think that every one of these millions of “illegal” persons being deported or otherwise detained will get due process to prove that they are actually a citizen? They barely get that now.

Do you think it won’t expand beyond the immigrants who are on that list, once it gets going and no one’s put a stop to it when it was “immigrants”?

I talked to someone in my family today who said he’s probably safe, because of certain reasons and the category that he’s in. I’m not convinced that he is.

The tide is sure as fuck going to be shifted. They got that part right.

If you want a preview about how any of these dummies that are actually in the US are going to behave, look for the reaction of the civilian Germans after World War 2. For the most part, it was, “This is awful and unfair, I can’t believe they would be so mean to us, when we didn’t even do anything.”

No. She lost because a massive Russian and US-fascist campaign corrupted the state of the media until people couldn’t tell up from down.

“I care so much about the Palestinian people that I have no choice but to become ‘unexcited’ about the only candidate of the two who doesn’t actively want Netanyahu to exterminate them even harder” is yet another example of the nonsense-logic they managed to get into the conversation. If Biden had been taking a hard line on weapons shipments, the big catastrophe about the left candidate would have been something else. I can almost guarantee it.

The chorus of people who just now learned something new and were so excited they left a comment is absolutely wonderful.

I like how everyone else is saying, “Oh sweet! Look at this thing I just learned today!”

And then this guy is over here with “Well aktually espresso is totally different from drip coffee and so this totally unrelated thing Wikipedia was saying is all wrong I’m so smart.”

I think Lemmy needs some kind of daily “smart person contest” to draw off the energy that otherwise gets spent on trying to find someone to prove wrong in the comments at the expense of everything else. Lord knows, I need one of those too.

I was talking about:

Since it’s going to be shit either way, remember that getting Greens to the 5% threshold is attainable.

Someone commented under the post, advocating for the Green Party, and the mod left it up but deleted and banned people who replied to that person and brought up the whole “impossible to overestimate the consequences” thing.

I didn’t do anything similar to what poVoq is claiming I did, as you’re pointing out. But the people who did do that, the mod left alone, banning people who objected.

I’m done litigating this at this point, but I did get tempted into coming back to point that one thing out.

Edit: Phrasing

I feel like using Lemmy.ml here is cheating.