this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2025
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Progressives do vote for centrists. Centrists do not return the favor and vote for progressives. Harris didn't lose because the left staying home; the left held their nose and voted for her, even though that loyalty is a one-way street. She lost because she was such a dog shit candidate that she couldn't drive enough people who aren't highly politically engaged to the polls. The only reason she lost the election was because of her own poor decisions. Stop blaming the left for the failures of centrist democrats.
This is the same frustrating conversation we had to have when people blamed Clinton’s loss on Bernie bros staying home.
Even when we had concrete data that showed that a higher percentage of bernie voters voted for Clinton in 2016 than Clinton voters voted for Obama when he won the primaries.
The data tells us over and over that progressive and demsoc voters show up in higher numbers for candidates they prefer less than centrists will when presented with someone ideologically further left.
Are there people that wouldn’t vote for the centrist candidate, sure. But Mamdani is currently seeing how many centrists are happy to say “fuck strategy, I’m supporting cuomo!”
I get why those that still have faith in the Democratic Party are upset about the defeat. But I also understand why leftists are tired of being told “vote for this compromise candidate” in every election and even when we do turn out getting scape goated for them running garbage candidates that fail to capture the further left elements AND tons of non-left voters who sat at home and didn’t bother to vote.
Liberals being dumb isn't an excuse for us to be dumber. We're supposed to be better than them.
Giving a shit is more work than not giving a shit. But voting for a candidate doesn't mean you like them and it doesn't bind you to supporting them. I can post "Harris is a cop fuck cops >:-(" after I voted for her.
IMO the key is: how long does it take you to vote, and if you don't vote what are you doing with that time that is more valuable and progressive?
If someone told me, "I didn't vote last election because I was campaigning 18 hours a day for native land rights and there was no way to get mail or reach a polling place" OK. I'm not blaming that person. They're working way the fuck harder than I am to make the world better. If someone told me, "I didn't vote last election because I barely survive on my three jobs and the GOP has made my polling place a 6 hour line that I have to drive to. I can't even afford the gas to get there." Yeah, that makes sense.
But I never hear that from online progressives. I hear, "oh I didn't vote because both parties suck." "I didn't vote because they didn't support ." "I didn't vote because there's no point." These are all shitty answers. Better answer is: "I did vote for the Democratic candidate and I'll always vote for the most progressive candidate available." That's the minimum effort.
Any American that isn't braindead stupid knew what was on the line this election.
And any American that knew what was on the line voted for Harris.
You can blame Democrats all day, and they do shoulder some blame, but the majority of the blame falls on stupid fucking Americans that couldn't rub some brain cells together, not a party that isn't great at messaging.
And what do you hope to accomplish by blaming the electorate? They're not going anywhere. You can bitch about the voters all you want. But ultimately, if you fail to appeal to them, that just means you're a bad politician. Complaining about voters is like complaining about the weather.
I can't call Kamala Harris an idiot to her face, but I can call lots of voters idiots to their faces.
She lost because Dems stayed home, low turnout in key Democratic areas. No matter how bad you think she was as a candidate you're not going to convince me that she was worse than the dog shit candidate that won, and that's on the people that stayed home.
She was objectively worse. Trump represented his base. Kamala didn't. Trump is objectively the better politician. He gave his base exactly what they wanted. She refused to, preferring to pander to wealthy conservatives instead. You can argue she had better policies, but you cannot argue that she wasn't an absolute dogshit candidate. She was simply bad at being a politician and had no business being at the top of the ticket.
You need to separate quality of policies from quality of candidate. You'll never make any progress as long as you keep conflating the two.
Today I learned a prosecutor with a doctorate in law who has committed no crimes and ran a campaign primarily focused on unity and inclusion is objectively worse than a convicted felon and adjudicated rapist who illegally attempted to overturn an election after inciting an insurrection and ran a campaign based on hate and fear.
She refused to lie through her fucking teeth to her base or make enemies of our fellow Americans to win an election. And she gave a podium to a prominent conservative that spoke out against Trump. Maybe not a great move, but not some betrayal.
She also ran with virtually no preparation out of necessity.
We can keep blaming Harris or we can start blaming stupid fucking Americans that jeopardized our democracy because she wasn't the best candidate ever. Like, what kind of broken fucking brain thinks "well, she's not that great, so let me gamble with a felon rapist traitor instead"?
Reading comprehension. You're confusing policies for candidate quality. Trump was a good politician with shitty policies. Kamala was a dog shit politician with ok policies.
It's pointless to blame the electorate because they're not going anywhere. Or are you more of a Zionist type, who would prefer just killing the electorate if they don't vote your way?
She was in-arguably the worst candidate because she lost. She wouldn't have been the worst president.
The bullshit is centrists blaming it on the left. We told them how to win, and they went a different way. We showed up for her anyways, but the shitty candidate lost.
I'm blaming anyone who choose not to vote for her who were center or left of center. Anyone. As stated: if you are to my right or to my left and you explicitly choose not to vote for Harris and could have, you can suck shit.
If you discouraged people from voting for her: you can suck shit. If you constantly criticized her and barely talked about how fucking dangerous Trump is in general political discourse: you can suck shit.