I appreciate that they and their personal community is in pain at this moment, but I don’t think they were justified in calling me and mine cowardly and hopelessly sheltered because I personally live in relative safety and am struggling with the helplessness of being unable to make enough of an impact to my government was called for. I don’t want me and mine to go through such pain, but I am increasingly concerned that we will not be able to avoid it.

I have people that I’m working with on the local scene who could not bring themselves to vote for Harris, even with how awful they knew Trump to be. I was able to vote, but I understand why they could and know that they still get out and do the work

Being disappointed by Democrats is unfortunately nothing new for me. Two decades of it under my belt so far.

Yeah, and what they’ve been doing to Rashida Tlaib has been sickening me. I have so much respect for what she’s been doing, and seeing the Democratic Party trying to villainize her and her constituents has been disheartening.

That hasn’t been my experience of Democrats so much as them using “at least we aren’t as bad a the Republicans” as justification for not pushing to stop harm, holding to the status quo as hard as they can and “courageously” voting with the Republicans to “save” something while dismantling something else. It seems like the lionizing of mediocrity.

With respect, I do not believe that you are describing me here. I have friends and family effected by several issues, and who–if not lamenting their lost loved one–are in fear of losing either their loved ones or their own life. I am indeed in what I consider (hope?) to be a relatively safe part of the US where my state may go as far as to protect my friends, family and self from what the incoming administration has already said it wishes to do to me and mine. I am trying very hard to ensure the people around me are safe, and I hope that these efforts bear fruit for my community.

I worked to the very last moment of the election to encourage Harris to come out in support of the Palestinians and, to my growing horror as the election progressed, the other victims of the growing conflict. I even did the “harm reduction” of voting for Harris’ plan of gentle chastisement over the outright support and encouragement of Trump’s, for all the good that my vote did.

I will not apologize for my family and friends continued survival and not yet having lost anyone to my knowledge, and will not wish it on them. I hope that you or your loved ones do not experience more loss, and have the space to recover as much as possible from that which you have already experienced. And may we all make it through the hate and violence that have been planned and that those that claimed to stand against it actually do so when it matters.

Nah, I’ve been doing local organizing and worrying about more than just the top of the ticket, and even past the elections. I supported the Uncommitted movement and was hoping that Harris would actually capitalize on the moment she had when she took over, and, yeah, I cast my vote for her for all the good it did. It’s fucking sicking seeing so many sneer at the movement, and pat themselves on the back for having the moral superiority for voting for “the right person” while making so little of what is supposed to make them the right person happen. Being so unconcerned that the person they are so self congratulatory about was saying they would do the awful things and work with the awful people they’ve been saying are the greater of the two evils.

Genuinely, why did the Democrats go so hard on the anti-immigration policy and cozy up with Liz “I am strongly pro-life and I am not pro-gay marriage” Cheney? How were they expecting to sell people on the lesser of two evils when they were trying to become what they thought “moderate Republicans” would vote for? I’ve done this song and dance with the Dems for two decades now. I know they don’t value me, because they know I don’t have another option in the race, but how am I supposed to be excited myself, let alone campaign at others and get them excited for another round of getting sold out?

I’ll be sure to remember that when, in the spirit of bipartisanship, Democrats vote to remove my husband’s access to HRT or revoke my cousins’ citizenship because one of their parents was an Arab immigrant.

I’m sure that will be of great comfort to me watching the Democratic party continue to capitulate to the Right over the next four years.

Can you tell me what my vote for Harris did? I got to vote for “less genocide” and get “more genocide”. Clearly, it was very important for Harris to keep out Palestinian- and Arab-Americans in swing states and bring in Republicans. Can you help me understand how that was supposed to win the most important election of all time where Republicans are planning on genociding everyone not them?

For whatever reason, when I’m hearing about Dems in the swing state I’m in, I’m hardly ever hearing why you should be excited to vote for the Dem candidate, but instead why the Rep candidate is so awful that you simply must vote Dem to stop them. Like, there was about a week(?) that Harris and Walz seemed to be coming out of the gate going “we’re gonna be so awesome, don’t even worry about the weirdos on the other side”, but then it became “please, it is of Vital Importance you do not vote for Trump, we promise Harris will be better than him”, and I just don’t understand why they changed.

As a fellow old fuck, surely you must remember Obama publicly opposing gay marriage to win voters, no? And, surely, of like me, you’ve been voting in primaries and “off-year” elections for decades like I have, you must remember the various progressives running for the Dem nomination only to have people like John Kerry and Al Gore be the “exciting, energetic” candidates. Sure, we can point to Clinton, but his strategy involved being conservative enough to pull in Reagan Dems and middle class Republicans, as well as the usual Democratic mainstays. You know, the play the Dems keep running while not having someone with Bill’s “good ole boy” personality to pull it off.

And, yeah, it’s been a breath of fresh air seeing unions do as well as they have recently, after being pounded into the dirt for decades. And, yeah, the economy is doing better, but people still struggle to pay for groceries and housing. Do you remember when George Bush couldn’t answer what the price of milk was, and how hard he got beat up over that? Did you vote in '92? I was too young, but I still remember hearing about the price of milk everywhere for a long stretch there.

I dunno, I’m just kind of tired of voting Blue election after election while getting told the issues that are important to me just can’t be done right now, because we need to appeal enough to Republicans again. Having to fight tooth and nail to get whatever issues some ground, be it civil rights, the environment or social services, and then see it up on the chopping block the moment Dems need to “compromise” with Republicans to not tear up a different right. And we still lose, or win just enough to not have enough of a majority to get anything done. The closest I’ve seen to Dems doing well while I’ve been able to vote? When they embraced the possibility of change and getting things done with Obama’s Hope campaign.

And, again, this is coming from someone who has voted for Harris, votes in primaries and off-year elections, who has done phone banking for the Dems, been involved in local orgs, has advocated to disillusioned voters to get out to the polls to vote because of how awful the alternative for not voting is.

But, you tell me: how successful was the Dem’s strategy this cycle? Did they manage to pick up votes on their right flank? What was the gain in conservative Dem voters vs. the loss in progressives? How does the gap compare to previous elections? What sort of voters did their appeal to “the middle” yield? I’m something of a numbers wonk at the end of the day and tend to be more receptive to the analysis instead of what I see as knee-jerk scapegoating, so tell me what went well this time around.

Weird, seems like it’s been the repeated denial of progressive issues while courting further and further right that has cost the Democrats the four of the past seven elections, no matter how much we beg for the slightest crumb of civil rights.

I remember how much we had to fight Democrats to get Gay Marriage and LGBT rights in general, and have seen how far they have fled from unions and healthcare. And I say this as someone who has actually done phone banking for the Dems, and has been telling people who are personally invested in what happens to people in Palestine that Harris is the best option on the ballot.

But, yeah, I guess individual voters are the best people to blame, and complaining that people cared enough about an issue to get out and do political action are the problem, and we should smugly congratulate ourselves that they should have just shut up and got with the program, their friends and family members be damned.

Well, what’s important is that Harris never listened to people who care about Palestinians. Surely, we will all be better off that the Harris campaign decided to hew closely to Biden’s policies, court Republicans for her cabinet and chase suburban Trump voters. Clearly, this is entirely the fault of individual voters, and we all agree that the campaign, corporate media organizations and monied interests bear no responsibility for this whatsoever.

I holding my finger over the button as long as possible in the hope that the button that the “spotless prosecutorial record” will suddenly add the “stop abetting a genocide” portion we’ve been asking for since before they changed out the previous button, but I guess I’ll be going for the option that isn’t currently telling me how my existence is threatening to them and hope that they’ll follow through on valuing human life this time around.

Okay? And by the end of the following year, the UAW had struck and used their explicit statement that they were not yet committed to endorsing a candidate for president that Biden came down to the picket lines himself to picket in support of the UAW, which helped them get landmark contract deals.

UAW says they might not endorse Biden Biden goes to the picket line UAW gets historic deals

Turns out when the rich and powerful set out to hamstring the ability of people to organize in the workplace, and spend a lot of time covertly policing political orgs they don’t agree with, well, people fall out of practice in being part of a community and organizing that community. If you then make every place that someone might want to build communities with other a place to extract money from, it’s real hard to build it all from scratch.

The UAW struck after the railroad strike. And got Biden to personally come down to ask the what he could do to secure their vote. Both happened while Biden was in office. What are you even saying about why the railroad strike failed?

Who else is looking forward to–regardless of the outcome of this election–being told throughout 2025 that it is of vital importance that we get in line with the Democratic party above all else so that we can ensure that the Republican candidate does not win the 2030 election?

Not so much on the fence between Harris and Trump, but on the bench, because apparently a significant demographic in my state is apparently not all that important to winning the swing state, and have been being iced out since before Harris was on the top of the ticket. Perhaps it is a failing of character to be unable to look past the continuing apologetics and support for a genocide and the emphasis on courting the “good” Republicans over the Progressives, but I can’t just set that aside and pour my energy into cheerleading the presidential race. I don’t have an option that I want, I have a choice between the status quo (which we know is leading us into bad places) and actively making things worse.

If you can’t see daylight between the parties, and hold that they are identical rather than one being markedly less awful than the other (note: less awful, they still have are awful in their way), then you are as annoying as the people who were screaming back in 2021 that anyone who wasn’t voting Biden in 2024 is a monster (please, tell me again how criticizing Biden is the worst thing I can do to keep Trump out of office). Y’all are catastrophizing so hard that you’ve forgotten how to build political power, and are relying on big orgs to do it for you.

Eh, First Past the Post is party suppression, tbh. When the math pushes us towards two parties, a third party is always at the cost of some other party that is nominally “on the same side”.