Misner said it was a difficult decision to vote for Trump. He said the point of the Abandon Harris campaign was to punish the Democrats for supporting Israel during its war in Gaza, which the campaigners view as a genocide, and he hopes the Trump campaign will be more willing to negotiate with group leaders.
Vindication feels awful here, honestly.
“I think the biggest problem is that your messaging to Arab Americans can’t just be ‘Trump’s a fascist, Trump is Hitler. Big, scary orange man, vote for me.’ Part of being a part of the American political system is being able to separate yourself from your opponent and lay out a better vision. And she did not do that,” Abdelrahman said.
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Negative messaging works, as much as people like to pretend it doesn’t.
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If you saw a literal fascist openly declaring fascist things, and your response to the milquetoast opposition is “Well, you’re not seperated enough, stylistically”, you’re not much more than a fascist enabler.
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In what fucking way is “Not fascism” not a better vision than “Literal fucking fascism”?
“She could have at least called for a ceasefire,” Khan said. (Harris repeatedly called for a ceasefire during her campaign, including during her Democratic convention speech.)
Ah, it’s just like being on Lemmy!
“Even in politics, humanity should be the first and the foremost thing to to be respected, to be valued, right? And [the] Democratic Party clearly, clearly, for an entire year showed us they do not care about human life,” Khan said. “They do not care about their constituents, how they feel about the massacre.”
Ah, yes, humanity is the first and foremost thing to be respected, which is why LGBT Americans have been served to fascists on a silver platter as a protest vote. Peak humanity.
which is why LGBT Americans have been served to fascists on a silver platter as a protest vote.
If you are queer and have any way out, get out. If you can’t get out, scrub your internet history as clean as you possibly can because they will hunt you down.
God I hate it but there’s going to have to be a new underground railroad for pregnant women and queer and brown people…
“She could have at least called for a ceasefire,” Khan said. (Harris repeatedly called for a ceasefire during her campaign, including during her Democratic convention speech.)
Ah, it’s just like being on Lemmy!
Oh great, this point again. They changed the meaning of the word ceasefire they were using. They tried to coopt the term into a meaningless one, while Muslims meant a ceasefire with actual effort and teeth behind it, meaning some sort of leverage, not the meaningless one of the Biden administration.
Keep in mind that Biden is still President and they completely ignored the letter they sent before about Israel having thirty days to change their human rights violations. So they clearly don’t give a shit even though they don’t even have to worry about reelection anymore so we can’t blame that.
Ah, yes, humanity is the first and foremost thing to be respected, which is why LGBT Americans have been served to fascists on a silver platter as a protest vote. Peak humanity.
You can’t feign outrage about people served on a platter when you did that exact same thing to people undergoing an active genocide. “First they came for the Palestinians, and I ignored them, because they’re not white.” Is that how the poem goes? You were willing to sacrifice an entire ethnic group so you can feel comfortable. Too many Americans were. Now we’re all going to suffer together, and frankly, we’re going to deserve it.
I wish I could upvote your comment more than once.
Harris didn’t call for a ceasefire. She called for both sides to voluntarily stop fighting and negotiate between themselves and that the US/Biden should do absolutely nothing at all to pressure Israel into making that ceasefire happen, while at the same time exerting maximum pressure on Palestinians to just surrender with zero guarantees of food or safety. In fact, she gave speeches that her support of Israel is unshakeable and they’ll give Israel whatever it needs, despite the majority of Americans in polling saying they favor conditioning military aid to Israel and Ukraine. She had a solid year of not just polling data but evidence that Biden’s policy was a failure and not just unpopular, and she just insisted on repeating his mistake. It’s like if a pilot is nosediving a plane and then a new pilot takes over but decides to keep flying exactly the same despite everyone telling to stop.
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I don’t really see how the Uncommitted movement could have done anything differently. They had pretty simple demands: let a Palestinian speak at the DNC, meet with families of Palestinians, meet with our leadership. The Harris campaign ignored all of those requests, so in the end, they declined to endorse her, but still urged their supporters not to vote Trump or third-party.
Endorsing her just wasn’t an option, given that she did nothing to meet them halfway. If your spouse is abusive, and you say, “If you ever treat me like that again, I will leave you,” then you have to leave them if their behavior doesn’t change. Otherwise, you are just inviting more abuse. If you tell a politician, “These are the minimum actions you must take to earn our endorsement,” and they ignore you, you can’t endorse them anyway. Otherwise, you’re announcing your demands carry no weight.
The Abandon Harris (previously Abandon Biden) movement was more hard-line, and the Democrats were clearly too centrist and hawkish to meet their demands for an immediate arms embargo But the Uncommitted movement offered reasonable steps that the Harris campaign could have taken to win over Arab Americans, and she flat out ignored them. She is clearly to blame for not taking that offramp.
No. And fuck you for taking that position. That Uncommitted position doesn’t ‘punish’ Harris, it simply ensures that a demagogue would be elected. AND just coincidentally, the early actions of that demagogue signals that Palestine simply won’t exist in any significant fashion in a few years.
The direct result of your holier-than-thou’ position is that Palestine gets fucked 10 times harder. Good job asshole.
Well, A) I’m describing the position Uncommitted was in, not giving my own. B) Who the hell are you quoting when you say, “punish?” That word doesn’t appear in my comment, and I definitely didn’t say that the Uncommitted leaders were trying to punish anyone, so what the fuck are you talking about? Are you actually arguing with me, or someone you made up in your head? C) Your entitled, sneering attitude is indicative of why Harris lost; telling Palestinian that Harris won’t oppose the genocide, but vote for her anyway or else; telling teamsters she didn’t need them to win; it turns out that was a losing strategy, huh?
By the way, I actually voted for Harris, despite her floundering, directionless campaign, but since I’m not a complete idiot, I want to understand people who didn’t. Blaming other people for Harris’s loss might feel nice, but internet temper tantrums don’t win elections.
Anyway, I could also call you an asshole and tell you to get fucked, but honestly, I’d rather you work on your reading comprehension. You don’t seem to have understood (or at least engaged with) anything I said besides, “Uncommitted didn’t endorse Harris.” Honestly, based on your comment, I’m not even sure you understand what the Uncommitted movement was.
I will apologise for my aggressive response. I conflated your position with direct support for the underlying. That was a mistake and I apologize.
Re the ‘punish’ comment, I remain completely disgusted with Uncommitted due to their stated goals ’ a protest campaign aimed mainly to pressure Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to achieve a ceasefire in the Israel–Hamas war and impose an arms embargo on Israel’
No such political pressure towards the Trump campaign? I recognize that he isn’t the sitting president but even a casual observer can see that his presidency would likely be significantly worse for Palestine.
However, re third party or ‘none of the above’ voters, including any teamsters that did not vote for Harris because she didn’t beg, fuck em. I believe their fence sitting (at least partially) enabled this right wing smorgasbord.
Well, I get what you’re saying, but I think Harris’ failure to negotiate with these groups is entirely on her. The Uncommitted movement’s goals were very lofty, but their demands were small. They wanted State Rep. Ruwa Romman to give a speech at the DNC, and a leaked draft showed it was a very mild speech that didn’t even condemn Israel. It just called for an end to the war. After the DNC declined, they asked her to meet with families who’d lost loved ones in Gaza, and she ignored the request. Finally, they gave her until September 15th to hold a meeting with them, and she again ignored them, so they decided not to endorse her.
The Uncommitted movement didn’t create the problems Harris had with the Muslim community; Biden’s handling of Gaza did that. The Uncommitted movement just took that anger, organized it, and put it towards productive action. That’s what activist leaders are supposed to do. The Uncommitted leadership was clearly looking for any gesture towards the Palestinian community that they could take to their supporters, and Harris just wouldn’t do it. You have to do something to win an activist groups’ support. Endorsing her after she snubbed them wouldn’t have convinced the Uncommitted members to vote for Harris, if would have convinced them their leaders were pushovers.
And that sentiment, writ across the country, handed the election on a platter to the Republican party. Who will be arguably worse for Palestine that the Democrats.
Ultimately none of the Uncommitted arguments are wrong - I would go so far to say they are reasonable - but they presume that the alternative is better than the incumbent. Which I believe is manifestly misplaced in the 2024 election. All well and good to withhold support because you’ve been ignored, but this is a prime example of cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Anyway. I respect that you’re clarifying and I appreciate that.
There was also pressure on the Trump campaign too. And what did he do? Went to Dearborn and met with Arab-American leaders and lied about how he wants peace. Biden/Harris couldn’t even do that minimum. Biden detoured his campaign to avoid the area completely. Harris got a lot of the community back on board but then couldn’t bring herself to say that she would have done a single thing differently than Biden. She couldn’t even walk back Biden’s anti-Palestinian comments.
And you seem to miss the reason that the Arab and Muslim-American communities struggled this year; it’s the Trolley problem. You’re asking me to vote for someone who is actively helping murder people in your community, when asked about it he has no remorse and said he would do it all again and not even claim he will do better next time, and I’d better fall in line because the other person is worse. You’re asking me to actively vote to kill people in my community and threatening me with more deaths if I don’t. Can you see why this is such an unappealing choice? Obama killed innocent people in drone strikes but he at least tried to claim it was an accident and was doing better and supported us against the active bigots in the other party trying to ban our existence. Biden stubbornly ignored a solid YEAR of pressure, falsely promised he heard us after the primaries and then refused to hear anyone out. Well he lost by an even greater margin than our community and he has only himself to blame. He’s not even wallowing, he’s reportedly complaining that he could have beaten Trump if that awful Pelosi didn’t real his internal polling and make him stand aside.
People like you seem to think protesting against genocide is a bigger problem than sending billions in support of genocide. I can’t tell if it’s a matter of diehard party support above all else or simple delusion.
Just acknowledge that we were always getting one of two options. This isn’t confusing in the slightest.
To extend the analogy used in the comment starting this thread, it’s like leaving your abusive partner to live with a more abusive partner.
Why the ever loving fuck would you choose the worse option?
The choices were genocide or genocide. Apparently some privileged people here haven’t noticed that the genocide has already been getting worse and worse for over a year now.
Maybe electing someone unlikely to restrain them at all while simultaneously making shit worse in the US and Ukraine, doing a 180 on what little climate progress we’ve made, making abortion illegal nationwide, and reducing/ending social security will help.
There’s people in my community who lost relatives in Gaza. I’ve been to their funerals. Their families will tell you, “Trump didn’t kill my family, Biden did.” Please tell me how I could convince them to put that aside and vote for Biden anyway. We tried, despite Biden’s speeches on the topic making it harder and harder since he decided to twist that knife in deeper and deeper by giving such helpful speeches saying that he doesn’t trust Palestinians or that Israel has not committed any war crimes.
In the end, Harris got far more votes in my community than Trump did, but it didn’t make any difference since Trump won by a margin bigger than all the voters in my community.
Trump ultimately ended up carrying Dearborn, a majority Arab American city in Michigan, by more than 6 percentage points — a massive swing from Biden’s nearly 40 point win there in 2020. But most Dearborn voters also voted against Trump, who got about 43% support in a deeply split field.
Guess you’re not in Dearborn.
I wonder if these people just don’t think Trump is that great a threat or still haven’t figured out how FPTP voting works yet.
Biden wasn’t restraining israel at all and Harris kept talking about how she’d be a continuation of Biden. Now you’re bringing in a bunch of other issues that aren’t what these voters are focused on. Turns out you have to appeal to voters to get their votes.
You seem to be under the impression that all discussions between the two countries happened in public. Do I have that right?
As I said in the other comment you left, your interpretation of the analogy makes no sense. Your point would be valid if I were discussing Arab and Muslim voters who voted for Trump, but I’m not; I’m discussing the Uncommitted movement, who endorsed neither candidate.
Oh they only didn’t know whether they wanted to better or worse option. Still pretty goddamn stupid.
Yeah, also no, and it you’d actually read the original comment, you’d know that. As I said:
they declined to endorse her, but still urged their supporters not to vote Trump or third-party.
They knew Trump was worse, they didn’t want Trump to win, but they needed Harris to make a gesture towards the Arab community before they could endorse her; she didn’t, so they didn’t. She didn’t negotiate to get their endorsement, so she didn’t get their endorsement. It’s very funny that you’re acting like everyone else is an idiot yet you still don’t understand this.
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A perfect analogy where you argue to stay with abusive partner and you are actually a horrible person if you don’t want to stay with your abusive partner. The idea that your partner stops being abusive is also so absurd that it’s out of the question.
Yeah, yeah. People said this leading up to the election to. The plain logic of “we’re getting one of these two” didn’t seem to click with many, you included.
I’m a cis white male who makes pretty damn good money so in all likelihood I’ll be fine. That surely won’t be the case for many. I tried. /shrug
I bet you did wonders with your “stay with your abuser” rhetoric. With clever posters like you, how a could we possibly have lost? But i am happy to read that the election did matter to you anyway.
You can lead a horse to water.
You put this so much better than I ever could have. Thank you for this.
and you say, “If you ever treat me like that again, I will leave you,”
Finish the analogy to better fit this issue. You leave your partner for a MORE abusive partner. Why?
…except they didn’t do that. The Uncommitted movement didn’t leave her for Trump; they didn’t endorse Trump and actively warned their members not to vote third-party because it would help him. They just followed through with their threat to withhold their endorsement. If she needed their help that badly, she should have done something to win that endorsement.
If you live with an abusive spouse, but the house is literally build in an island surrounded by lava, A. Maybe your bargaining position is not that good.
B. Maybe, even if it’s super shitty to live with the abusive, its still better that swim in lava, so you bite the bullet and wait the lava cool down
Yeah, except the Uncommitted leadership didn’t tell their people to, “swim in lava,” (if I’m following this tortured extension of the metaphor correctly). As I said, they opposed Trump, and even warned their supporters that voting third-party would help him, they just didn’t endorse Harris because of her failure to make any of the very small concessions they asked for. She put them in a position where, as political leaders, there was no way they could endorse her without completely destroying their own credibility. If she needed their endorsement that badly, then it sounds like her bargaining position wasn’t that good.
at the end of the day Democrats had their check writers to think about which is why they intentionally lost
Harris consistently had wins handed to her on gold platters and Harris repeatedly stuck her nose up at the platters
Democrats are not the party of the people or progressives but just Republicans with different coat colors on getting checks from the same places
Is your username a back-formation of Verdana, the font?
no just verdant
BOOoooOoOoTh SiIIiiiIidEs!!!1
You saved Palestine 🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳
And find themselves without fault?
not the voters’ job to make themselves buyable
that is all on the candidates
We are not talking about the voters or the candidates here. We are talking about the people telling voters not to vote for someone and then pretending they had no culpability whatsoever when that person loses. Thank you for proving my point.
If they’re telling people not to vote for someone because they’re doing something they can by all accounts stop doing, then it’s still on the candidate.
Yes, I understand both you and Mr. Banana, who went out of his way to constantly tell people not to vote for Harris every single day on Lemmy up through the first day in November, you want to divorce your words from any actual real effect they might have.
It’s very Republican of both of you.
You might have me mistaken for someone else. I went out of my way to get people to vote for her but also knew she was doomed if she kept up her current path because I recognized what happened in 2016 and so kept criticizing her for supporting the genocide. I tried to set up a freaking vote exchange thread to swap votes with people in swing states even and got criticized by people here for even trying. I was trying harder than most people here because I recognized the danger and the patterns, instead of burying my head in the sand. I felt like freaking Cassandra lol.
People told others not to vote Harris because she sucked as a candidate
Not the citizens’ fault billionaires rigged the election again
I see you don’t understand cause and effect.
If you tell someone not to do something and then they don’t do it, you’re part of the cause.
TYpIcAl ShItLiB LoGiC /s
Yes let us hold blameless those who didn’t give enough of a shit to piss on America when it was on fire. Your true colors show here.
You already hold Biden and Harris blameless.
I need anyone involved with these write “I will not enable a greater evil through my inaction” 69 times on a chalkboard
What you’ve done is basically said “I wanted steak for dinner, and got chicken, so I just forced everyone to snort draino instead!”
Don’t worry, as this thread shows, the kinds of people who think like this have learned absolutely nothing, and are determined to learn absolutely nothing.
“I think the biggest problem is that your messaging to Arab Americans can’t just be ‘Trump’s a fascist, Trump is Hitler. Big, scary orange man, vote for me.’ Part of being a part of the American political system is being able to separate yourself from your opponent and lay out a better vision. And she did not do that,” Abdelrahman said.
Hey, maybe in 2028 the Dem candidate can run on repealing the national abortion ban. That feels like more than saying, “I WON’T enact a national abortion ban”. Yayyyy /s
“He at least, at least came and spoke to the Muslims. He heard them and said, ‘OK, I will finish. I will end the war in Middle East,’ even if he didn’t say, you know, a genocide, but he said he will bring peace,” she said. “And that’s what the people wanted to hear, and that’s why he got the votes.”
“Just lie to us at least”. Fuck me…
This is America. I’m dumbfounded by the decision making skills we have, collectively.
Pollution, lack of education funding, lots of police, lots of jobs with below living wages, no healthcare
All adds up to what we have now
And again not the voters’ fault we got got sold out for the check writers
