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I sear to fucking christ these people do not know, or do not WANT to know, any answer but "appease fascism."

Trump is the SAME DAMN GUY he was FOUR YEARS ago; the Dems just ran SIGNIFICANTLY TO the RIGHT of where they were in 2020.

The Dems literally lost because they ran a campaign for Republicans and guess what? Your fucking BASE are NOT Republicans. It's right there in the fucking numbers and the results from both 2016 and 2020.

Anyone telling you the answer is to appeal more to the 75M fascists who backed Trump is simply looking for an excuse to make out with fascists.

PERIOD. The fucking numbers are RIGHT THERE.

Joe Biden was not a uniquely charismatic dude. Nor was his legislative record anything anyone but bougie cracker liberals would write home about. The guy wrote the fucking 1994 Crime bill, used to eulogize segregationists, and was a huge cheerleader for the disastrous Iraq War.

He won, by MILLIONS of votes, because he promised to end the wars, reign in police violence, dismantled the migrant carceral complex and punish Nazis.

What did Harris promise? YEAH NOT FUCKING THAT.

Like we have THREE elections worth of data on running against this SAME FUCKING GUY now.

Harris/Clinton: Run a campaign for Never Trump Republicans, bougie surburban crackers, rich donors, and NatSec ghouls = LOSE to a reality TV show assclown nazi.

Biden: Run a campaign for a diverse coalition containing young people, Black people, brown people, poor people, and anyone else who opposed nazis = WIN and by MILLIONS.

Fuck your narrative; it's RIGHT THERE IN THE NUMBERS AND RESULTS.

@AnarchoNinaWrites I'm with you on this, but it still doesn't explain why the real majority turned out to be "Refuse to vote AGAINST a literal Nazi"...

@jwcph Because America has always been fascist, and has been mainlining fascist ideology for decades, and because "we have to stop the fascists" doesn't work all that well when you're promising people a genocide, a police state, and cooperating with fascists.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not absolving Americans for being dogshit here; but fascism hasn't been a dealbreaker in this country for the vast majority of its existence. There are at least 75M fascists in America.

@jwcph Like, there's no theory involved there. Harris didn't fail to make the argument he's a nazi; although I'd say she failed to make the argument that she would oppose nazis. Either way tho, plenty of Americans shrugged.

Tellingly, Biden didn't run as an anti-fascist either in 2020; he said he'd punish nazi crooks. But that's not the same thing.

@AnarchoNinaWrites No, I know - but fucking why!? This isn't just a US question, or a this election question; people are poo-poo'ing our worries & even commending TFG all around the world, too, without suffering any consequences, indicating the same mechanism at work everywhere. We can also turn the question around: Why do most people emphatically agree that Nazi Germany was terrible if most people are actually fine with fascism?

@jwcph Because they don't think they have anything to gain by supporting the 3rd Reich. It is after all, finished.

But a lot of people, both historically and today, see upside in fascism and believe they will not be the targets of that regime. The answer to why they didn't care enough to vote when nothing was in it for them is the same answer as why vast portions of our society don't care about colonial massacres, or police violence against people who don't look like them. "Not me."

@jwcph That having been said - both of these things were constantly in 2020 and 2024. Biden did things to make them vote FOR something, even something I suspect a lot of them knew he would not deliver on. Harris by contrast said "you can stop this particular fascist, but you have to support a bunch of things you hate and I'm not offering you anything you want."

Whether that's right, or moral, is not an argument that goes anywhere. You and I can agree it's not; but the name of the game is win.

@jwcph My position is, and has been, for months and months that "hold your nose for a genocide, expanded police funding, fascists migration laws and rehabilitating neocons to vote against Trump" would not be enough. And I think it's very clear I was correct.

You go to war with the electorate you have; not the one you wish you had. So, in all seriousness and not being snarky to you at all "why didn't they just shut up and vote" is not a relevant question. It was predictable they would not.

@jwcph This is a country that wholly internalized that SOME deserve to die, and some deserve to live. That some DESERVE opulent luxury, and some DESERVE to toil in misery to provide that opulent luxury. That some people matter, and some don't. That American exceptionalism means they matter, and other people don't.

Expecting them to vote to protect their neighbors or even worse, faceless minorities they've never met, was not realistic. "What's in it for me" was always going to be the question.

@jwcph So the only answer I can provide for "why" is "every waking moment of the history of this country, and the socio-political-economic order we still live under."

Every single day, millions of Americans choose to prioritize their perceived benefits, over the lives of others.

And perversely because that is the case, asking "why they didn't behave differently than everything they've ever been taught" is in some ways, not a relevant question.

@AnarchoNinaWrites I guess it's just a bit of a harsh awakening that people in general are somehow even worse at thinking about their own existence than I thought they were...

@jwcph Should the knives ever come out for them, they will be the first to deny any responsibility for such. Sadly however, that's a realization that only comes to people once they knives ARE out for them.

There's a whole poem/little speech about this in Nazi Germany, starts with "first they came for the..."

@jwcph Sure, I agree with that, but that also brings me back to the fact that American elections are not about 330M undecideds who might go either way.

Trump has a base, fascists, and they were always going to vote for fascism. The Dems base is not Trump's base and the things that motivate them to vote were clearly articulated in Biden's 2020 platform that again, won 81 million votes - more than any campaign in history.

They vote for nihilism and hate. The Dem base votes for progress.

@jwcph The whole problem, if you simplify it down, is that Trump ran a campaign to turn out fascist Republicans, and Harris ran a campaign to... turn out Republicans who maybe don't want to admit they're pretty fashy. If both sides run for Republicans, then Republicans will win.

She had to turn out HER base, the one Biden WON with, and not only did she not do that, she mostly spit in its eye to chase suburbanite crackers and Never Trumpers.

Turning out your base = win. Trump did. Harris didn't

@jwcph No, I get you. And I don't disagree. I guess it's just a different conversation than the one I was having, which is very much focused on "why."

But it's not a conversation I'm unwilling to have with you; I guess I was just a bit slow on the uptake that we'd essentially switched topics.

The nazis definitely are a death cult, and they definitely are voting "against" everything. They do however believe that advantages them somehow; but it's not the most important thing. Punishing us is.

@jwcph This gets really deep into psychology, but on some basic level the fascists in the base have essentially accepted that we're fucked. That the planet is going to burn, that society is going to be a Bladerunner hellscape, that nothing is really ever going to get better. What they're supporting now is a hierarchy they believe will allow them to to retain power, and privilege over the ash heap and offload the worst of the suffering onto the people they hate. It's nihilist and hierarchal.

@AnarchoNinaWrites I get that, but it's deeply irrational & it takes very little intelligence - and not even that much thinking - to realize it, even if one doesn't know anything about crisis behavior. By its very nature hierarchy is thin at the top & wide at the bottom, so the odds of benefitting from it are *fart noise*. Conversely, collaboration is how we got fucking EVERYTHING.

Nihilism shouldn't appeal this broadly; see also "self-preservation".

@jwcph Every would be nazi thinks they'll be the dashing Captain drinking wine in the castle; nobody ever thinks they'll be the dead guy face down in the Russian snow.

The very same mental gymnastics propel the entire capitalist order - hundreds of millions of people support capitalism against their own class interest because they are pretty sure, some day, they'll be the rich guy. It never made any sense in that case either, but we're talking about the same psychological forces here.

@AnarchoNinaWrites If people think they're that lucky, you'd think gambling was more popular than it is...

(I know, lotteries are, in fact, popular - but not "more than half the population base life & death decisions on winning" popular)

@jwcph My parents, who I would describe as proto-fascists at the time, blew $125 bucks a week on lottery tickets for decades. So...