politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
Yet another over performance by Democrats - this was a Trump +14 district that voted D+24 yesterday.
But is it an overperform? Looking back to 2011, the strongest performance by a GOP for this specific seat is 38%, and it was this election, the last GOP candidate had 18% before this...
For whatever reason, local and presidential elections can very much swing differently, and in this example it clearly looks like you can't read much of anything into the results since it has been different from presidential outcomes already..
In fucking* Louisiana. I love how that's nowhere near the headline. Hilarious.
Take the wins where you can get them, but it's worth noting the vacated seat was held by a Democrat. This isn't a flip. The district traditionally learns blue at the local/state level, as per the article.
Not trying to rain on anyone's parade, but the "oh my god those backwards Louisiana hicks actually voted for a Democrat?!" Narrative is needlessly divisive and kinda shitty. That district has been for years.
The only thing worse than vindictive, bigoted conservatives is vindictive, bigoted leftists who don't want to find ways to live alongside the stupid hicks.
At least they're stupid enough that they can be turned and manipulated to supporting better outcomes, but leftists holding a grudge do entire goddamn worldbuilding exercises around justifying hating everyone with a simple life and a simple mind.
(Go ahead and downvote me browser, while you do, think about what kind of biases you hold against people based on how you imagine their house and yard to look.)
in my experience, it's liberals, not leftists, doing that more often
In my experience there are a LOT of leftists who cling to the label without actually being more than a liberal with some angry outbursts.
I don't disagree. Class Rules Everything Around Me.
do you really want me to get my list of people leftists hate because "stupid hicks" is pretty low on the list compared to folk with the wrong skin color or disability or sexuality. of course point that out to a leftist and they'll deny it, but when you look at what they actually do instead of what they say, it's clear as daylight.
I think it's the huge margin for the win, and this:
For iberville and assumption, in the presidential elections, support between R and D has moved within bounds of like, 2%, for the last 3 presidential elections.
In that same time frame, the maximum support a republican candidate for the 60th house of representatives has been 18.8%. Not margin, TOTAL.
Don't get me wrong. It's not bad news. But the reality of this outcome in this district is "No material shift in voting patterns in area over the last 20 years".
That still makes the 67% Trump got in 2024 really questionable. But nobody in charge has seemed to bat a fucking eye.
Why would it?
This pattern has existed since before Trump in that district. Leans right at federal level, leans left at state level.
Assumption is slowly sliding more right at the federal level... but also sliding more right at the state level. At 38% of the vote Daigle had the best republican showing in 20 years.
This result isn't a directional divergence. That would maybe raise an eyebrow.
It’s a pretty purple district and, although Trump won big in this district, they tend to vote blue for the local stuff, and this Democrat replaced an incumbent democrat.
There are a lot of really miserable, insufferable kids on Lemmy right now seething about this because it flies in the face of the "voting is useless, everything will be rigged" narrative that they push to validate not wanting to be involved.
Showing up at the polls is not our problem in the US, it's getting people involved enough to actually learn about and read what candidates represent. We had the largest voter turnout in US history over the last couple elections, but people basically voted at random because they tuned out of the political chaos.
It's far more clear this time around who is doing what to disrupt the status-quo in the US and I expect we're going to see a massive swing in the opposite direction between this November and 2028.
They don't want to be involved in the actual democratic process, but they reeeeally don't want to shut the fuck up about their irrelevant opinions.
I am 99% sure it is a CCP effort. Been tracking it for like a year now. Hard to track because it's contagious.
For the love of God always call out doomers for being suspect. They're not here because they're feeling impending doom. They're here to make you feel impending doom.
Russia/Israel/CCP. Almost all of the doomers are voting doesn't work, why aren't you starting a civil war, the dems are just gonna gaza harder than the turnip, etc.
Golly, seems like lots of people don't like you
not even the commie doomers can stop us now
yay democracy!!
I mean, Im on board with the message overall but I very much think people not getting to the polls is an issue. 90 million chose to sit out last general election. That is a HUGE problem IMO.
It's still important to push the message to not be lazy about going out and doing the thing, especially in mid-terms which get far less turnout.
But that 89mil who did not vote in 2024 is very close to the average percentage that stays home every election anyway. My point is, the sampling of those who did vote, didn't necessarily make me think that if uninterested people did show up, that it would have gone much different.
Of the people who were actually registered and voted in 2024, a vast number of the people who voted for Trump identified as Obama voters and Bernie supporters. People had basically discarded whatever political alignment more informed voters adhere to and just looked at the price of eggs at the time and associated that with Biden/Harris, and that was the most informed opinion shaping voting habits.
People did not watch debates. They did not pay attention to large news stories. They got most of their political news from social media; tweets and facebook memes in the small amount of time they spend scrolling content that isn't entertainment. They did not know what either candidate was advocating and largely didn't care, most thought it didn't effect them either way.
This is all by design, and if we want to talk to about vote manipulation, this is the biggest issue, which is there are too many fake shills and sock-puppets all over social media, even here on Lemmy, who will adopt the stupidest or most radical takes on both sides of every issue until bystanders and browsers roll their eyes at the whole thing and tune out.
There are literally millions of people in India and other countries who farm Twitter for a few dollars every month by pushing rage-bait, arguing with people, pretending to be Americans and pretending to care about our future, while sharing propaganda and memes designed to make people hate political involvement.
Our biggest problem is not turnout but engagement and information.
Voters seem, with good reason, to hate whichever party is currently in power is another easy way to read this.
Yeah, this unfortunately. I’m a lot more pragmatic and actually try to vote
Yes, lemmy.ml exists.
I blocked that whole instance and still get their shit in my feed.
I will believe you if you can provide just 2 examples.
Because the DNC is emptying out the "victory fund" that neoliberals were stealing from state parties and hoarding to use to convince us to settle for neoliberals in the presidential...
The only reason Republicans are competitive for House/Senate majorities is for decades neoliberals sandbagged the party, and if you didn't play ball they bankrupted your entire state and let Republicans take it to punish you and set an example to get there states.
That's how Jeffries and Schumer got elected as majority leaders, going against them would hurt your constituents and the politicians. Whether you were ethical or not there wasn't really a choice.
That's been over for a year now
We're literally a year deep in the largest reinvesture of funds from DNC to state parties, which has let them all run at campaign pevels.
We keep "over performing" because for the first time in 30 years the goal is as many seats as possible instead of a very slim majority so nothing would get done.
Which is why billionaire owned media keeps pretending this is "over performing" and not just what would normally happen if the oligarchs weren't holding us back by shoving neoliberals down our throats.
But this is gonna keep happening, because it's a fundamental change to the party that caused it.
I don't think I follow the logic on this, most probably because I'm not sure which funds / fund pools you're referring to.
Could you explain what you mean a bit more ELI5 level?
The national Democratic fundraising org basically controlled the purse strings that the state levels orga relied on for the last few decades. If the state level wasn't playing ball, they weren't getting the funding. This caused a huge loss of Dem seats in state legislatures across the country, which lead to a big gerrymandering push by Republicans to solidify these seats for them.
Leadership changed recently and this devastating policy has been reversed
Yeah, but like, its gonna come with some assumptions that we agree on stuff, and even a simplified version goes back 20 years. So this will be long, but as simple as I can make it.
2007 primary was mostly fair, there was a lot of finger on the scales and implied threats of ending careers for working with Obama. But the neoliberals didn't take him serious enough to really fuck with it.
That lead to Obama winning the primary, and the neoliberals from Bill's days who running the DNC to shit themselves. Because if Obama won, he'd name a DNC chair and that was the party.
So the DNC actively worked against Obama even in the general in 2007
Obama, rightfully pissed off made a stupid decision and allowed the neoliberals to hang onto the DNC. However he ran everything thru his own PACs and organizations. Which did a few things:
Bankrupt the DNC
Leave state dem parties to fend for themselves.
Leave the voting members of the DNC nowhere to turn, except double down on neoliberals and corpo. support.
So by the time 2015 runs around, the party is still broke, however the prior chair just gaslights everyone else at the DNC and keeps telling them it's fine.
In order to fund the DNC enough for the primary, a deal is reached with the Clinton campaign, where they funded the DNC in exchange for final say on anything the DNC said or did, essentially Hillary Clinton cut a check to buy the DNC
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/02/clinton-brazile-hacks-2016-215774/
But, instead of just cashing a check, Hillary also set up a system of "bundling" where you could (in one donation) write a check for the max to a candidate, max to the DNC, and max to all 50 state parties.
"To make it easy" just one single check, you could give to Hillary.
That money became the "Hillary Victory Fund":
https://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/dnc-leak-clinton-team-deflected-state-cash-concerns-226191
That money was then supposed to be broken down and distributed, which would have been very easy since they were maxing stuff out.
But neoliberals gonna neoliberal, so:
https://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/clinton-fundraising-leaves-little-for-state-parties-222670
So anyone that would have given to state parties because they maxed at the DNC or candidate, gave to the victory fund which the DNC and candidate appropriated and used as a single bag of money.
This got passed to Biden, then to Kamala.
The only way your state party could get some crumbs, was appeasing that group of neoliberals. Go against them, and they'd give you start nothing. They didn't care if Republicans won, because the goal of neoliberalism is to never have enough power to do what voters want.
Now that the goal is "as many seats as possible" and the money is going where it was always supposed to, we're going to see massive swings like this election.
So like I said, it's long. But thats honestly as short as it could be and I had to leave a lot out
Makes sense, but couple clarifying questions:
By "ending careers for working with Obama", you mean the people mostly left over from Bill Clinton's time as president were threatening people within the Democratic party to not work with Obama?
Wait so, he was so mad at them that he.....let them keep power? That doesn't make sense. Can you shed any light on why he'd do that?
Man, that Victory Fund sounds corrupt as hell. Thanks for explaining things I was too immature/politically ignorant to pay attention to back in the day.
They would blackball anyone who worked on a campaign for a progressive.
Like not even in secret backroom deals, they were very upfront about it, if you worked on a primary to challenge a neoliberal incumbent, none of the neoliberals would hire you, it worked for a long time.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/blacklisted-political-consultants-profit-democrats-civil-war-n1026496
The most gracious interpretation is he thought the party would wither and die and something would organically replace it...
But I think he was just a petty dick.
What he should have done was hand the keys to someone who would at least try to fix it, do the stuff Martin is now. Instead it cost us a decade of progress.
Dean had the 50 state strategy in 2006. Which paid off in 2008, with the largest Dem win in generations.
That of course was quickly squandered.
What got us 2008 was people actually wanted to vote for Obama because he was charismatic and his policy matched what voters wanted...
Something Dean and the DNC tried to stop from happening.
That was in spite of the neoliberals, but to be honest I'd never imagined someone would even attempt to give them credit for that
It wasn't really Dean - though as an ex-Deanite, maybe I'm biased.
Dean was elected in spite of lots of the Democratic establishment. And they did oppose Obama (for little reason it turned out, he didn't block them).
With Obama, who I volunteered for in 2008, I can say for sure lots of the support thought that we were cleaning house of the Dem leadership, only to see Larry Summers and the like immediately brought back in. My big question is really if the fix was always in, or if Obama got push back and immediately gave up. Either seems likely.
When’s the last time a district swung by nearly 40 points? That’s nuts. Good, but wild.
For context, here's how the elections have gone down since 2011 for that seat:
Not exactly a huge pro-democrat swing. This is actually the strongest contested result the republicans have had for this seat..
It's not really a swing when it's a completely different office, especially with trump. There are many places were a local Democrat and Trump won in the same ballot, including this one.
Also, the incumbent won, it's literally not a flip.
I didn’t call it a flip, but thanks for the reminder.
You called it a swing, and it isn't that either since they literally elected the same person they elected last time.