Oh thank God it’s not just me. I’m literally just killing time on the road before a party and I am so fucking lost right now.

I’m trying to be social and my curiosity is insane right now.

Well, the rules are forcing them to run with Mamdani. Plenty of Democratic lawmakers do not like it. Cory Booker, Chuck Schumer, a lot of democratic legislators in his own state are not endorsing him. A lot of them did endorse Cuomo, if they didn’t this year, they have in the past, so to be suddenly mum and not even a feeble “I support him” is… odd at best.

There’s also no word behind the scenes that any legislators are even attempting to get Cuomo to drop out after… how many years has the argument been that third parties split the democratic vote? Now you have a Democrat doing just that and no condemnation from any new York legislators that he’s risking a republican victory. Not even a chant of “Blue no matter who” If bernie sanders had ran independent against Hillary, would Democratic leaders be this silent? Schumer would be furious and making press conferences condemning him. He doesn’t do that to cuomo.

In the meantime, multiple sources have been pushing mayor Adams to step down from his own independent race. Both democratic and republican (and billionaire), presumably to get more votes to cuomo.

This is what drives me nuts about his apology.

It’s not that you thought it looked like her. It did.

It’s not that you thought it sounded like her voice. It did

It’s the fact that you thought she would string together the sentence:

Watching that sultry little temptress squeeze into a Canadian tuxedo three sizes too small with her bouncy little funbags on the screen staring at you, piercing through the core of your soul with those ocean-blue eyes that could resurrect the Führer from his grave in Argentina

In front of a full congress to be saved in the library of congress. That is how little you think of her. That’s the insult, that she’s somehow dumber than MTG.

That’s the thing to apologize for.

That’s kinda how he works.

He’s a “better politician” than the other much older politicians because he can explain the problems and blame Republicans and old politicians for the problems but ultimately his solutions are the same.

Also he comes straight from private equity and refuses to say anything bad about them. As a matter of fact he’s the first politician I have ever heard say “no”. Full stop, no weaseling out of it. It was when he was asked about his prior employers and their involvement in a price fixing scandal over Canadian bread prices.

So… yeah I don’t like him

Like, the most devils advocate I can be for her vote is that she’s arguing that we shouldn’t take away their shield, we should take away their spear.

To which… I still don’t see the logic. Because if you can block with one hand you’re free to stab with the other. If all you have is stabby implements, you got no way to deal with when they stab back.

They’d be forced to be less aggressive, which they seem intent to be.

I’m actually planning a twoshot of DC20 next week. So hopefully I will be able to do just that.

From everything I’ve been reading I’ve liked quite a bit, hopefully it works just as well in practice.

Why this is not brought up every other day whenever Schumer or Pelosi think they are out of touch, I will never know.

I’m not,

I’m genuinely skeptical that most polls are an accurate sampling of the population. Most people I know would never sit through a phone poll. Most polls reek of phishing. One of the very first phone polls said that Dewy would beat Truman in a landslide. It was completely wrong because it was predominantly rich people who had the phones to even answer the polls.

Who has the time for polls? Who drops by the candidate booths at the state fair? It’s a type for sure.

The only poll I have been a part of all last year was a phone poll entirely about optometrists and eye appointments and how they should be handled in the healthcare system. I couldn’t even finish it because the entire things was just… painful to go through.

If it makes you feel better, that hand has 7 fingers so it’s probably AI.

At least a human didn’t draw it

This is why I’m of the opinion that we should refer to everyone in the legislative branch by state. Names should only be necessary for campaigning for the primary and the general. Sure, put their name in the title bar at the bottom of the screen as they speak, but the media should just refer to all politicians by their state of origin.

hear me out

We have almost 600 people in power in the legislative branch. 100 in the senate and 435 in the house. My home state has 10 Politicians in this branch, Georgia has 16, California has 54 . Most people struggle with 10 names at a party lasting 4 hours. Good luck trying to keep track of all of them on, unless you are a political science major, a purely casual basis. We will only be able to keep track of 3 to 5 politicians that just… truly suck. A few that we really like, and the rest… let’s just be real here, do god knows what.

You can do a lot of damage being hidden and convoluted, and I don’t think it’s unfair to simplify it by grouping politicians by state. If a Georgia politician does not want to be grouped with Marjorie Taylor Greene then they need to provide ammunition to get them ousted in the next election cycle. If they don’t then they’re part of the problem. This also drags all of the state into things. If I don’t like Tom Emmer, I sigh and move on about my day. If I find Minnesota did something dumb, then I get cranky. Oh wow, this is the guy in my district, or my neighbor’s district? I had no idea. I want this guy out!

What’s more, it incentivizes cooperation and competition at a state level, and begins to break up the more monolithic federal level of the parties. Federally, it’s easier to pace the unpopular positions to be pushed by people with 4 years left in office, and hope the heat cools down three years later. If the entire state gets dragged into unpopular positions, it makes them much harder to push.

I mean, they had 14 years didn’t they?

Have they ever tried to pass an ammendment for this?

No, they had a Scotland to fight for. A Scotland where they could have a home, a family, a community, where they could ask a doctor for help and that they could build in a general upward direction.

America nowadays has skyrocketing home costs, a kid who can’t leave your basement to make a family, record breaking loneliness, doctors who can’t help you even with insurance, and absolutely nothing implying that any of it will get better.

Defend this from the man who will make it hell, so that it will take longer for us to reach hell.

Such a powerful message to send the voters.

I’m sorry, I just think that the Democrats could’ve won so many more people with better messaging. I have no faith that they will have anything better come 2028. Assuming we still have a democracy come then.

The issue I have here is that Trump was not new to politics this time around.

Giant wall of terrible things Trump has done.

… Yeah, I agree. As a matter of fact, it sounds exactly like " if you’re not with us then things are going to go to hell." or “if you don’t vote for us you are gonna feel even worse we promise you”, but a lot more verbose.

If you want to rally people to a cause, you need TWO THINGS. A thing you don’t want, and a thing that you do. Either a thing you will have, or a thing you have right now. If you don’t have that thing you want, then you don’t have a better of two options.

You just have a less hopeless of two options, and you shouldn’t be shocked that you didn’t draw a fighting force of people together like Mel Gibson in Braveheart.

aaaaand, what’s the most efficient way to reach all those voters and change their mind? To persuade the wind to blow us in the right direction?

we’d need some sorta… grand organization of people who have an incentive for Trump to lose who will reach out to the voters, educate them, motivate them. Maybe they have their own candidate? That’d be a fine incentive. Then they can get the word out, organize, throw in some goals for the people to rally behind. Like a- like a political party!

What exactly is your argument here?

That the wind cannot be moved via external forces? It does whatever it feels like it wants to, completely and utterly out of our control and we were screwed no matter what? The wind was always gonna blow us to Trump? This is just fate? Really all the money the democrats spent was never gonna change anything so they’re just blameless? Howling at the sun in a vain attempt to keep it in the sky?

Or is it that the Democratic party was perfect. It was perfectly min-maxed in such a way that we had the maximum possible electoral votes. They were just given an impossible task. No candidate existed that could beat Trump, no platform existed that could defeat Trump. They could’ve lost harder, but there was no way to win? There’s just too much of the voter base that is just so EVIL.

I am not criticizing Democrat voters. I am criticizing the Democratic party themselves. I’m criticizing the campaign, I’m criticizing the president and the VP. I’m criticizing everyone in power who didn’t try to convince him to step down and not run again. They are the rocket scientists and all the voters are the wind.

If the Democratic party aren’t going to learn from this and just go “well voters are dumb we did everything right”. They will lose again to the next fascist (or maybe the same? Who knows what Trump will do)

If that’s the case, then the Democratic party just ain’t the way to win against facism.

It’s also frustrating to spread the word and make sure everyone knows the consequences

That’s the point that people are trying to make though. That’s the only thing democrats ran on. Everything we’ve done is great, everything is getting greater, if you’re not with us then things are going to go to hell.

That rings hollow when many people you know are NOT doing great, you do NOT feel anything improving and everything is getting slowly worse, oh and if you don’t vote for us you are gonna feel even worse we promise you.

The only way you could make a worse call to arms would be to just out and out shout “it’s hopeless let’s end it now!”

no, I’m not.

I’m not angry at the voters. I’ve watched the whole primary looking at the democratic strategy thinking. 'That’s not gonna work", “thats not gonna resonate with voters”, “where the hell is Biden?”, “Is Biden still cognizant?”

At some point, a campaign or candidate can be so bad, that I can’t blame anyone but them for losing. Joe Exotic, the tiger king, ran for an elected position and lost. I blame him. His campaign was trash. He did better than expected purely from his fame, but I do not credit the voters for keeping him out of office. He did a lot of damage to himself all on his own.

Your comparison is worse.

The options weren’t chocolate and vanilla. They were getting kicked down a steep hill or kicked off a cliff, and you seem flabbergasted that some people chose to flip the bird instead of groveling and thanking the democrats for only kicking them down a steep hill.

Especially when in the next 4 years their options are gonna be slightly steeper hill or another cliff.

I just don’t understand people railing at the non voters and the people who voted for Trump. It seems as backward as a rocket scientist raging at drag and wind breaking their rocket. “How dare the wind do this! Don’t they know this will progress humanity!?!”

It’s your job to build a rocket that can withstand the air at those speeds. The air is always a problem you have to deal with, and no, you can’t shame the air into doing what you want.

Genuinely the democratic campaign seemed more like they were pushing a trolley problem than a future. So why is everyone so shocked it failed?

… you know that’s really an apt comparison. Never thought about it that way but really it’s like a trolley problem except it is their job to shout for people to come up and pull the lever.

It’s no surprise they had trouble finding volunteers.