cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/16451158
this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2026
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Antagonize whom? Lemmy was FILLED with leftist preachers telling everyone that Harris needed to earn their vote. They loudly proclaimed that everyone needed to vote 3rd party to send a message.
It was no different than politely debating a Trump supporter. Anyone debating them was an attack. When they talked they believed it wasn't antagonizing, only responses were "antagonizing".
At this point those true leftist need to be publicly shamed for their mistake so it doesn't get repeated. Pretending it didn't happen will allow history to repeat.
Lemmy is a niche platform with, I believe, about 45,000 monthly active users. Let's say for the sake of argument that all of us were influenced into not voting. (Ridiculous, I know, but for the sake of argument.) That's less than a rounding error on the millions who didn't come out to vote in 2024. That is to say, all of the raging Lemmy Leftists affected basically nothing.
On top of that, surveys and interviews in the media after the election found that politically-engaged people, even leftists by and large, did vote for Harris. It's the politically disengaged, and disillusioned voters who didn't understand the stakes, or see any advantage in putting in the effort to vote. (What, did you seriously think that all Americans have perfect information, and make only deeply-considered, rational choices?)
On top of that, Republicans in control of state governments have been doing everything that they can to make voting harder, and less convenient, to suppress the turnout.
On top of that, the GQP ran Spanish-language ads in many markets peddling bald-faced lies. These ads were largely not countered by any Democratic messaging, and what there was was largely in English. The impression that I got was that Democrats felt that they had brown people's votes on lock. Never mind that brown people is a granfalloon, and they're just as ideologically diverse as any group of people, and many of them were not naturally inclined to vote Democratic. (That was certainly the case in Michigan.)
So, factually, we have a poorly-informed or not politically-engaged population that's not inspired to overcome the inertia and obstacles to go vote, and an uninspiring candidate who didn't speak to their daily lives and worries, and, no, forget all that, let's expend effort blaming the Lemmy Leftists.
THIS is why Democrats lose. It's so much easier to focus on a strawman and browbeating a handful of irrelevant loudmouths than it is to address these real issues, and actually inspire people to come out and vote with a message that reaonates with them.
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