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this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2026
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Leopards Ate My Face
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It shouldn't. It's basic harm reduction.
One side probably won't stop it, but they're on our side so there's a sliver of a cintilla of a chance we could pressure them into it.
The other side absolutely would not, vocally stated he would help accelerate it, and would laugh in our faces and do even more to accelerate it for no other reason than it made us mad.
The choice should have been obvious, even if I and everyone else would have preferred better options.
The very fact that the Trolley Problem exists as a thought experiment and there is still active discourse over the correct solution should tell you why people didn't all feel that they had a responsibility to vote for harm reduction. You can't expect an election that resembles a famously divisive philosophical thought experiment to turn out with everyone arriving at the same conclusion, and it's pointless to dwell on the fact that everyone didn't fall in line with what you think is obvious rather than adjusting to the reality and acting accordingly. That means getting candidates elected in primaries that aren't going to put us in the same trolley problem come time for the general.
You can also put pressure on candidates mid-campaign to change posture.
I can tell you this, the Venn Diagram of the people itt blaming voters for the Democrats supporting a genocide in 2024, and the people who didn't want Biden to step down is basically a perfect circle. Its also the same circle which shielded Harris from any critiques on her support for genocide.
See people aren't exclusively machines.
I know people who felt that both sides at least tacitly supporting the genocide was so depressing that for their mental health they basically checked out of politics.
No, that response isn't helpful, but it's a very real thing that happens to real people. They needed a candidate that cared that people's lives were ending across the sea, and neither side offered that.
That hurt Kamala's chances in a very real way, and might even be the deciding factor for Trump's second term.
While you and I can look at this and go "Wow, that's not logical, she's way better than Trump", the Democratic campaign should have had political scientists and psychologists that knew about this well-documented phenomenon. I imagine they did, and ignored it, because siding against Israel would've cost money.
So while it's true that the choice was still objectively obvious, it's also completely true that the Democratic campaign absolutely mishandled it, because this isn't some new phenomenon, and group human psychology isn't unpredictable. It's also not the fault of those who didn't vote because of that.
D and R parties both need independent voters to win any election. For example, even if every D voted for a D, they would lose without independents voting for them in significant numbers. This has been a political fact for many years.
So... why did the Harris campaign target REPUBLICAN voters (instead of Ds and independents)? They wasted a lot of vital time on that ("He doesn't need to know who you voted for" etc), and they knew that they would lose if they did so.
She knew it too, Harris isn't stupid. She took a knee.
I'm not fully convinced the conspiracy is that deep, but also if hard evidence came out saying so, I wouldn't be surprised.
You don't have to believe my word, but answer this question. You are a Democratic veteran. You KNOW for a FACT that you need Democratic and Independent voters to win. Simple mathematics demands that you do so to win.
Why, oh why, would you pursue the Republican vote? They've never done this before in a Presidential election. It can't work. It's never worked before, anyway.
This was discussed openly during the campaign, tons of Republican outreach and advertising with the Harris run... why?
I cannot think of any other reason, I would actually feel a lot better if there was a logical reason, somebody help my troubled mind
I think they sorta reasonably might have thought kamala would be another Bernie, who was pulling republicans from trump during the primaries against Hilary. They thought kamala had that sort of appeal.
It's not sound logic, but I think someone in politics who doesn't understand what drew people to Bernie could see the parallels and conclude if they focus on it, they can draw those Republicans in.
Reasonably? For what reason?
Bernie didn't win the Presidential election. He couldn't even win the nomination.
"Let's try something that has failed, instead of doing something fundamental that we have repeatedly used before to win elections."
"Let's try this idea! It's just Trump, who has won before. No worries"
Come on, she is not that stupid.
They are not that stupid.
Side note: They collected over a billion dollars for this failure (that we know of). New record!
yep, and the Dem leadership still support israel no matter what they do. They learned nothing and will try to set up the same voter hostage situation in every vote from now on.
Right? Makes that other comment under this seem more valid.
Just because humans are vulnerable to certain psychological effects, doesn't mean it's not the fault of those who were effected by them. Humans are also vulnerable to stress eating. That doesn't remove the blame from fat asses with no self-control.
And this person absolutely should have better self-control, whoever the fuck, sorry, TF she is.
And some candidates should be able to take a stand against genocide. Too bad you got your way and none were on the ballot.
We don't live in a world of "should", in the real world of course it is demoralizing and affects the vote turnout.
We all know the US government will back Israel no matter what... and the voters can only punish the incumbent party for doing so.
65% of Democrats don't want to finance Israel. Two thirds of their own party, that's massive!
Voter turnout will continue to fall; D and R parties will continue to lose voters (now down to 30% registered voters each) and the Independents will continue to grow (now up to 40% of voters).
Why? Because our major parties ignore what their constituents actually want, and we can only punish one party every term.
It shouldn't be that way, but it is.
The same people in this thread blaming voters for how Kamala Harris ran their campaign were the same ones insisting we had to run Biden as the incumbent, and calling you a bit or a school if you said they needed to be replaced.
We wouldn't have this outcome if the people who've made it their entire identity to blame voters had placed their frustrations with the party and demanded better, sooner, when it could have made a material difference.
The problem then being the electorate. The same group so many here want to absolve. You may not care about politics and want to 'check out' but it still cares about you and will still effect you even if you try to ignore it. In that vein elections will still happen and people you agree/disagree with will still be given power over you and your life. No matter how low the turn out a decision will be made with or without your input. Better to do what you can to give that input and make it the most useful it can be, before you get no input at all
Yeah, they should shut up and love genocide like you do.
How are all those iranians doing now after those protest votes. Their deaths totally worth the clear conscious of not voting
If every election is a decision between the lesser of two evils and both evils become more evil over time then harm isn't actually reduced in the long run. This is why harm reduction is a failing long term electoral strategy.
People preaching harm reduction whose candidates only ever increase harm over the last offering know this. They're arguing in bad faith.
Perhaps. But that's not the world we live in. Demanding an electorate to suddenly change in a way it never has and start behaving like Homo economicus is only going to lead to further loses.
Honestly, people behaving like Homo economicus is how you get MAGA.
Think about it. Isn't Trump's pitch to voters ultimately an argument in rational self-interest? It's all "I'll make an in group and an out group. You'll be in the in group. I'll pull up the in group while pushing down the out group."
Racism and sexism are rational. Or at least they are rational from those that benefit from them. Think about a white male living in the Jim Crows South. Your life was made soooo much easier by racism and sexism. There were whole career fields where they were the only quarter of the population that were eligible for them. They were automatically in the top quarter of society, simply by their race and sex.
Anti-immigrant zealotry is rational. If you're a native-born US citizen working in the construction industry? Every legal or illegal immigrant being deported would cause your standard of living to soar. Economists would tell you that on net it will harm the economy. But if suddenly the pool of construction workers is cut in half, any US citizen who knows how to swing a hammer is now rolling in dough. That's the rational terror of fascism - every time another group in the "first they came for" poem is liquidated, someone ends up with their property, their jobs, their place in the social order, etc.
You NEED to have a respect for persons built into your ethical framework, or else you can end up justifying evils of all sorts, all in the name of the greater good. Hell, Dr. Mengele slept well every night, content in the knowledge that he was doing the greatest good for the greatest number.
The side of genocide, oligarchy and fascism?
Nonsense.
Absolute nonsense, and the Palestinian Americans who voted 'undetermined' en masse during the Democratic primaries to send a message to Biden/Harris knew it too. The party made their choice between the people and an unpopular genocide. They chose genocide.
Hey guess what. The genocide got even worse under harris' opposition. How did that work out for all the genocide joe non-voters. How have palestinians benefitted under those protest votes/non-votes. Not to mention all the dead iranians that wouldnt be had harris won
Congratulations on the furtherance of your only goal.
I was trying tp get people to vote for the person that wasnt going to start more wars in the middle east. Or kill random people in the carribean. Or put all trans people on a watch list. Or rail against any form of electrification. No the only ones who accomplished their hoals were those trying to get americans to think that the above candidate was the same as harris. You know realy morons.
That's true.
It always does, because both ruling parties exist in service to Israel. And therefore, they have no impetus to do anything but escalate.
Had she been elected we'd be in exactly the same position.
Really wed be at war with iran? Wed be blowing up random boats and killing people in the caribean? We would have snatched up other country leaders? We would have completely destroyed world trade by tarrifing every other country on the planet? We would have all but destroyed the NATO aliance by starting said iran war and also threatening to violently invade greenland and canada? Do you need a prescription for this severity of blindness
Israel would be, and therefore, we would be too. Yes.
You'll recall that Biden actually kept many of the Donald tariffs, so yes, it's likely we'd be okay with disrupting trade to some extent.
Not Canada or Greenland specifically, but considering Obama was at war in 7 countries when he left office (that we're able to confirm, at least. Could be many more.), and Biden was bombing several countries as well as aiding and abetting genocide and a manufactured famine in Palestine, it's hard to argue that we wouldn't be doing stupid shit militarily regardless. That's especially true given the bloodlust of Israel and the Democrats' insistence that we continue to hand them WMD's on demand.
Thank you for the suggestion. You need to stop pretending that the Democrats are meaningfully different from Republicans, especially considering the Democrats also ran a candidate with publicly-evident brain damage.