People demanded unity.

Who are these ‘people’ that demanded unity? Centrist Democrats reflexively dash towards the center. It’s just part of their belief system; they’re personally centrist and fundamentally opposed to major transformative policy. No one ‘called’ for Biden to be some big unity candidate. That was his choice, not the peoples.

Obama proved himself a centrist, but he ran as a progressive. That’s the crucial difference.

Honestly, I at this point wonder if progressives would be better off running as Republicans. Trump has largely, at least on messaging, distanced himself from a lot of traditional Republican economics. His base doesn’t really care much about traditional Republican policies like tax cuts or even deregulation. It’s mostly just driven by grievance and raw rage against vague elites. Mostly that is directed against cultural elites, but that same movement could be directed against wealth inequality. And the Republican Party has proven itself much more receptive to new ideas than the Democratic Party has. The Republican Party can be taken over by charismatic figures, while wealthy donors and special interest groups largely control the DNC. This isn’t likely to change any time soon. The existing Democratic leadership has more to gain by losing as a centrist than seeing a progressive win and force through change in the DNC.

I say progressives should try running as Republicans. Call yourself a “radical Republican,” hearkening back the historical radical Republicans in the post-Civil War era. Say you were going to stick it to the wealthy, give the little guy a shot, and not do any DEI. Hell, repeatedly hammer the nepotism and social advantages the wealthy have as “wealth DEI.” Rail endlessly against big business and elites. Vow to not appoint anyone who went to an Ivy League school to any position in your administration. Promise not to even talk to a single Wall Street Banker.

Exactly. And in a first-past-the-post system like the US, parties are constantly running the calculus of which interest groups to bring in or kick out of the big-tent coalition. You can call for raising taxes on the rich; that will help you with progressives, but it will cost you with the wealthy. You can be for LGBT rights; that will help you with LGBT folks and progressives, but that will cost you with conservatives. Parties constantly balance these issues to try and maximize their chances of winning elections.

The Democrats made this calculation on Gaza. It wasn’t some spontaneous act. They actively ran the numbers; they did the market research. They estimated that being 100% pro-Israel would gain them more moderate votes than it lost them in progressive and Muslim votes. They thought they would lose some Muslim voters, but they figured rebuking Israel would cost them too many middle class white voters.

Well, the Democrats fucked up. The middle class white voters they signed the Gazans death warrant for never showed up. And enough Muslims and progressives stayed home that they lost the election.

If the blame can lay anywhere except the DNC themselves, then the blame lies with middle class white moderates. No serious person should expect a group of people to show up to vote for a coalition if that coalition deliberately kicks them out of the coalition. But the Democratic Party bent over backwards to appeal to suburban white voters. Yet they still voted for Trump.

The Democrats deliberately and intentionally chose to throw Gaza supporters out of Kamala’s coalition. They did this hoping that it would net them more votes than they lost. Ultimately it failed, and yet, still, there are people now blaming those who were kicked out of the party, instead of the people who run the party.

You could throw in some Sam Bankman-Fried’s ‘philosophy’ which was just freshman-level ethics. The tech bro version of deep revealed moral truth is just they would have seen if they hadn’t all dropped out of college before taking their gen-ed classes.

In regards to Musk, I would settle for having his citizenship revoked as punishment for his earlier illegal immigration.

I’m honestly not too worried about this. Trump can already effectively run for a third or any number of terms. The Republican party is now a full-on cult of personality around Trump. To stay in power, all Trump has to do is have one of his fail sons run as his successor. During the campaign, have the actual candidate largely in the background, and make it clear to all voters that his son will be running as a formality only; Trump will remain the real power behind the throne. And, once elected, Trump can continue to maintain power through the power he personally has on the party. If his son ever goes against his wishes, Trump can get on TV and immediately turn the base against the nominal president. His son may formally be president, but he’s not getting anything past MAGA congressmembers without the blessing of Trump himself.

Then I guess Obama gets two more terms, because Republicans obstructed him.

Seriously. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and had pro-confederate newspapers shut down. That is what a real response to a threat to democracy looks like.

That was Hillary’s platform, Biden’s platform, and Harris’s platform.

Let’s be more specific. That’s what you need to do in order to protect the oligarchy. The United States is not a democracy; it is an oligarchy. The bottom 90% of the population has zero impact on how they are governed. It has been this way for decades.

This always happens to oligarchies. It happened in Rome, and now it’s happened here. The Roman Senate was intransigent, fighting for generations against the most minor of reforms to help the common man. In the end, demagogues came to power promising to help the people by fiat. Of course, most of the time these emperors served only themselves, but even the few crumbs they threw to the people were more than the old oligarchy gave them.

That’s the thing though. Most Americans feel they don’t really live in a democracy, and they’re right. Statistically, the interests of the bottom 90% of the population have zero impact on Congress. Congress’s actions only correlate with the opinions of the top 10%, and moreso the higher on the income ladder you go.

Trump is nothing new. People voted for Trump for the same reason people voted for Napoleon. A system, even a democratic one, is only useful if it produces useful results. We don’t have a democracy, we have an oligarchy.

In a system as corrupt and intransigent as ours, the only way you can actually get anything done, for good or ill, is to be someone like Trump who runs roughshod over political norms.

This kind of thing is common in history. Democracies can get so corrupt, worn down, and intractable, that eventually the people just vote in someone who will rule by fiat. The wealthy cut off every avenue of democratic change, and eventually a demogogue comes to power promising to just produce change by force.

Anyone who has studied history could have predicted Trump. Authoritarianism is the inevitable consequence of corrupt nominal ‘democracies’ that only serve the wealthy.

I’ve seen those stories, but again, I really don’t see anything Trump will do that Harris wouldn’t have.

The big claim is that he’s going to allow Israel to annex land in the West Bank. But that’s been going on for years.

What about annexing land in Gaza? Well, Biden’s sat by while the entirety of north Gaza is now actively being ethnically cleansed. The Israeli military has declared any remaining civilians in the area to be enemy fighters and valid targets. There are hundreds of thousands of people dead.

That is what Biden has sat by and abetted. And the big fear is that Trump might sit back while Israel annexes North Gaza? I’m sorry, but why would you think Biden wouldn’t allow it? Annexing is just filing some paperwork. Hundreds of thousands have been massacred. Emptying a land of its people is a far, far greater a crime than filing some paperwork to formally annex it later. If Biden didn’t have a problem with full-on ethnic cleansing, he is not going to lift a finger to prevent Netanyahu from filing some paperwork. He’s already tolerated the greater crime, he won’t suddenly move to stop a lesser one.

I have certainly heard things that Trump will do. But they honestly don’t seem any worse than what is already happening. I think the only real difference is optics. The key difference between Biden and Trump is that Trump is an overt racist. Trump overtly hates all Muslims; he doesn’t even try to hide it. And because of this, we assume that Trump will be worse for Gaza than Biden has been. But on closer inspection, there really isn’t much more that Trump can do that Biden hasn’t already been doing. Biden already has the “US support to Israel” dial set to 100%. It simply doesn’t go any higher.

Because at some point it becomes a distinction without a difference. At some point you’re sitting there deciding between Hitler or Mussolini. Mussolini might objectively be the better choice, as his crimes are fewer than Hitler’s by pure magnitude. But given that choice, a lot of people will just refuse to participate.

People don’t vote based on pure logic. That’s not how human beings operate. Don’t make your voters feel like they need to go to confess their sins to a priest after voting for your candidate, and maybe then you won’t have people refusing to vote for them.

Ok. What is Trump going to do that Biden hasn’t already been doing? Everything I’ve seen is that nothing will change except perhaps an acceleration. Whether Gaza is genocided in 1 year or 3 is pretty irrelevant.

That isn’t something new. They’ve been annexing land in the West Bank for years.

It may accelerate under Trump, but it’s nothing new.

I didn’t expect Biden to stop the genocide.

I expected him to try.

What real difference does this make though? I honestly don’t see what actually is going to change in Gaza. Yes, Biden isn’t overtly racist against Palestinians, but he doesn’t consider them human beings either. He’s given Israel a complete blank check to do whatever they want. And I expect that to continue unchanged under Trump. As a practical matter, I really don’t see what Trump can do that Biden already hasn’t. Trump will just be a lot ruder about it.

I think there’s another narrative that just assumes Trump will be significantly different from what Kamala would have been.

What can Trump do that Biden/Kamala haven’t already? Much is being made about Trump sitting by while Netanyahu annexes large chunks of the West Bank. But that’s already been happening.

There has been much made about Trump potentially allowing Israel to annex parts of Gaza. But Biden has sat back and let Israel completely ethnically cleanse northern Gaza. If Biden/Trump didn’t lift a finger to stop an ethnic cleansing, what makes you think they would do anything when Israel files some paperwork to formally annex land? Hundreds of thousands of people area dead. I’m sorry, but compared to that, a little paperwork to formally take territory is a minor crime indeed.

War with Iran? Israel doesn’t want a war with Iran. They’ve been playing a careful tit-for-tat game with Tehran, trying to save face while avoiding an all-out war. And there’s little evidence Trump would get the US involved if a full war did start.

I mean really, what exactly do you expect Trump to do that Biden/Harris already haven’t? They’ve given Israel a complete blank check. I think we tend to just assume because he’s overtly racist against Muslims that he is going to be worse for the Palestinians. Yes, Biden and Harris aren’t overtly racist against the Muslims. But in terms of their actual actions, I can’t think of anything Trump can do that they already haven’t.

Do we actually know that Kamala would be any better for Gaza than Trump? Because Biden never altered a single Trump policy when it came to Israel. He enabled Israel just as strong as Trump did.

Moreover, Trump has told Israel that he wants them to wrap it up quickly. That likely means a surge in violence in Gaza in the next few months. And while the death toll from those months will exceed what they would have been under Kamala, the conflict had no end in sight at all under Biden/Harris.

What evidence do we actually have, other than just vibes, that Trump will be worse than Harris? I mean sure, he personally despises all Arab people, but it’s not like Biden or Harris really see the Palestinians as human beings either. Trump is just more overt about it.