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
I hate to break it to you, man, but most people barely care about politics at all. Politics is that annoying thing they have to deal with once every Thanksgiving when uncle Remus won't shut up about the border.
It would be really nice if they did care, but they don't. You either work around this problem, or you lose indefinitely.
Listen, i was vocal, i talked about voting a lot, about how i fucking hate the democrats, but they are the only way to avert a major disaster, and after i finished voting and told my friend group, i had one go “I’m not even registered to vote, lol” and “it’s not that big of a deal, we did a trump presidency last time, nothing changed” “both sides are blowing this out of proportion” and i lost my shit. I don’t know how you reach these people, maybe it’s time to start backing the leopard instead.
Part of the reason that people don't believe much happened under Trump is that the DNC is terrible about telling them.
What motivates the right? Non-stop, 24-7, talk news radio propaganda about how badly the woke democrats are fucking everything up, about how your son is gay because of flouride in your water.
What motivates the left?
I mean that, sincerely. It can't be our sense of righteous civic duty; as you just said, people don't care. We don't have a story. Biden passed the Stop Inflation Act? Okay. What even is that?
You should ask those same people, I'm not saying it'll be every single one of them, but ask them if they liked Bernie Sanders. It's not impossible to reach these people, most of them anyway, they just need something to latch on to.
The Democratic party has an unstable coalition at its very core because many people (in their coalition even) believe in white supremacy, have homophobic/transphobic tendencies, or believe in the subjugation of women. They have run consistently after Reagan with a center-right economic platform, but a more left-wing social/cultural platform. When people were marginalized enough by the capital class by their identities this worked as a voting block.
Now everyone has gotten comfortable enough -- because many of the systemic barriers that repressed them have been removed -- to believe the superficial lies that Trump isn't racist, or sexist, or <> and it doesn't motivate them enough to vote anymore.
So do the Republicans, evangelical christians want a police state that subjugates people, while libertarians want barely any state at all. Project 2025 is a messy mishmash of conflicting policy ideas exactly because of this.
Trump was successful in distancing himself from endorsing any of the conflicting points in the Republican base, Harris went into pleasing the neoliberals hard while very visibly shunning progressives and socialists. The result can be seen by all.
The point is, Trump ran a better campaign in a political sense than Harris, inasmuch he didn't distance himself from part of his electorate as Harris did.
I understand that's the narrative but the reality is that socialism is a nothing, nowhere movement in this country and progressivism is as well. There are not millions upon millions of people who will vote for a candidate that passes the purity tests that online leftists apply daily.
Ultimately, I think the only way out of this hole in this country is a giant labor movement again. That's what sorts the people into categories for policies. Do you work or do you own a company for a living? The owners and the "tolerant" billionaires need to be jettisoned from the coalition. But there's a problem there that has prevented them from doing that up until now and it's that giant piles of money have been necessary to win previous elections. The tolerant billionaires and millionaires were the ones providing that funding.
I personally think that Republican propaganda could be much less effective if people were aligned with unions that were actually making a difference in their lives. Nowadays, so few people belong to a union that they're largely irrelevant.
But it was a bloody battle last time, and I'm not sure it'll be any easier this time.