YOU are speaking!
Have you made any poignant commentary on the recent election in the U.S.? Do you have a good response to liberals who are upset with the results or process of the election? Have you written or seen something as a comment reply/post that you think has standalone value? Did you see a new take or analysis you hadn’t previously considered?
Whether it’s a long idea with lots of context, or a short and sweet one liner, we want those thoughts aggregated here. This post is intended to be a resource for comrades to draw from when having actual discussions outside of Hexbear both online or IRL regarding the election.
Consider this a mini-effortpost aggregator. This is not for shitposts, but humor is completely acceptable if it helps make the point.
But that’s what I mean — is it really not doing harm if me, a white person, tells a Black person who says something like “this is all the fault of you people who didn’t vote for the Black woman” they’re wrong, actually? Because this is a real life thing I’ve encountered, and something my partner did too, and I feel like I just don’t know how to tactfully handle this. I know the correct stance, but it doesn’t change the fact that there are frustrated POC who are not looking for two white girls to tell them they’re wrong even if they are. I feel like this is not my fight, but at the same time, if there’s no one else to do it…I dunno. I gotta say something, right? But do I actually?
Well of course you don’t say something like “you’re wrong, actually” but there are a multitude of ways to address that point without being self-incriminating. Just a few things that are relevant and I’ve brought up non-combatively completely fine:
•Voter turnout was down 20 million, and both republicans and democrats got less votes than in 2020.
•The democrats didn’t let the electorate pick a candidate in a fair election for the past 12 years. The last time there was a fair and open Democratic primary, the people chose a black man who went on the have the largest margin of electoral victory in a presidential election this century.
•Kamala ran AGAINST Joe Biden in the 2020 primary, and people did have the chance to support her and other minority candidates, but she was just too unpopular to even garner any donations or votes.
•The Democratic Party blatantly lied to us all for months about Joe Biden’s mental state and lost valuable time, money, excitement, and turnout trying to convince people that nothing was wrong.
•After Biden chose to no longer seek election in 2024, even after knowing how harmful and dangerous Trump is, apparently we are not important enough for the Democratic Party to even try to test the waters to see who the best candidate to run against him was. Our safety and wellbeing was completely, knowingly ignored through the subversion of the democratic process
•The Democratic Party subverted democracy by not holding a primary to see who the people actually wanted to run for president in 2024, which dramatically lowered voter enthusiasm.
•If the Democratic Party won’t be held accountable to pay for these mistakes, the people will instead. Instead of learning from what happened and apologizing or changing to ensure this doesn’t happen in the future, the Democratic Party is evidently perfectly happy to make us pay instead by suffering under a Trump presidency.
•After all of this, how can we trust the Democratic Party to protect us from who comes after Trump?
Obviously this is just a few ideas, but I’ve used pretty much all the points in this outline dependent on the context of the conversation.
I wanted to save this for last because personally it is the one I’ve had to use the most, specifically with family and other POC who still are adamantly liberal, and I think it’s the most damning and impactful:
•Most of the time, effort, and money that the Democratic Party spent in this election was to increase voter turnout in white, suburban or semi-rural liberal communities; the same ones we have turned to post-election and called out for voting according to the general interest of their whiteness. And yet, these are the same people that the Democratic Party was courting with the most effort. Follow the money, and you can clearly see that the Democratic Party is telling you who they care most about being part of their party, and it isn’t us.
Thank you. It really is a matter of approach and hardening my information it seems, then, and maybe even accepting that reaching everybody might not be possible, which is something I am still learning to manage and probably always will be.