I think after 4 years of Trump, if there are still elections in 2028, we’ll see a Democrat elected president simply because of the fact that how bad it is under Trump will be right in people’s faces. In 2032, however, we’ll definitely see the Dems lose to somebody even worse than Trump for exactly why they lost in 2016 and 2024.

The Dems don’t learn anything and lose, then 4 years later they win because the Republicans made things worse, and then they learn nothing, double down, and lose again, starting the cycle all over again.

And if neither party supports that reform, do we just keep voting Democrat until the end of time?

Or, and hear me out - stop desperately trying to reform an unreformable system and ignoring that it is working exactly as it was designed to, abolish it, and build something better instead.

you’re right, they make an outlandish promise (build a wall, mexico to pay) and then blame the other side when it doesn’t happen. The agenda-setting aspect you’re mentioning is also something that caused everyone in the democratic party to snipe Bernie since his whole thing was talking about what must happen and not getting bogged down in the endless details (though I think he could have also done that at that level too).

They are going to get change now. Especially if they are deported or jailed.

Yeah, the presidential election is a circus and only a performer can be an effective candidate. Ever since 2016, the DNC just runs these duds who focus more on extending an olive branch to the GOP than championing solutions to anything voters actually care about, no matter how realistic. Whether the solutions can actually be achieved is irrelevant; what matters is that you’re willing to shoot for the moon on important issues and not weaken your position before you’ve even started negotiating. Without that, how can you possibly expect voters (particularly, typical low-information voters) to show up for you?

Honestly, Tim Walz would have been a better presidential candidate. At least he has a personality.

Obama was the last Democrat to run on change in the system

And, even then, he enacted a shockingly small amount of actual change.

He had the majority long enough that he could have codified Roe V. Wade, and increased the minimum wage, and done UHC and all sorts of shit, but he wanted to policy wonk both-sides across the aisle cooperation shit, and well, ended up passing the Republican version of UHC and bailing out billionaires, which really doesn’t exactly reflect hope and/or change.

I’m not saying he didn’t have problems, or that he had an endless mandate, or that he did nothing, but mostly that the “best” democratic president in damn near 30 years who had the biggest mandate you’re probably going to find in modern politics still did a shockingly little amount of anything to improve or harden the government against clear nutters - the Tea Party was showing up, so it was or should have been blindingly obvious where that was going to end up eventually going.

I don’t buy the ® “do nothing democrats” line, but boy, they certainly make it hard to refute that claim in any form that’s not a 1000 word essay which is why it plays so very well on TV/news/Twitter.

That’s not the point of my argument. My point is that Republicans warned themselves they would lose MORE women and minorities if they didn’t move away from harsh immigration discussions and conservative social policies.

And then Trump did the opposite and made gains with those voters.

53% of white women voted for Trump.

As best as we understand the motivation of the constituency, they felt the economy was bad under Biden, that immigrants were increasing crime, weighing down our social programs and taking our jobs, and that Trump will fix everything with his concept of a plan.

In reality, Biden was dealing with the after-effects of Trump’s economy, plus the COVID-19 epidemic, and while prices did increase, the US has recovered better than any other nation, so he can’t really be faulted on the economy, especially after Trump’s initial response to the epidemic of pretending like it’s not already in the community, and politicizing mitigation efforts like masks and social distancing.

Then, immigrants are taking jobs that Americans don’t want, are paying taxes, and commit fewer crimes than the general population. So all of our concerns about immigrants are demonstrably false.

And if Trump’s previous methods of fixing the United States is consistent, then he’s only going to break things. An example would be his efforts to repeal the ACA, which turned into the skinny repeal that is, killing the program without a replacement, because making a better healthcare program was too hard for the GOP.

I remember all this, and it’s troubling the short memories of the American electorate. It’s not the first time, though. They should have remember not just how bad it was under George W. Bush, but how awful Republicans became during that time. Street Republicans were outwardly endorsing torture and suggesting that waterboarding wasn’t really torture. It’s like they lost all moral direction or even basic sense in favor of party loyalty.

Now as more votes are processed, and as we’re able to see how demographics voted, our review of the 2024 election might change, but right now it looks like huge chunks of the electorate are just forgetful and completely daft. More likely they’re just racist and bigoted more than they care about their own self interests.

If they got it they’d know that putting a Democrat in office and then pressuring them can get results, which is how we ended DADT and DoMA. The GOP doesn’t care what the public thinks.

It’s worth tapping the quote (accredited) from Linden Baines Johnson:

I’ll tell you what’s at the bottom of it. If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.

Sure!

So my original fantasy (during the Obama era) was to create what would start as an wiki of all^† the constitutions of all nations of the world, translated to all^† languages.

Then there’d be a workshop section where amateur legal experts could take known clauses and tweak them so that they’d be better (say, revising all the US federal elections so that they’re ranked choice, and fixing all the instances of two-party procedure so that they accommodate any number of parties. Or, for another example, fixing UK Parliament so that it is appointed by sortition from all qualifying citizens.)

The point of all this when the world isn’t on the precipice of despair is twofold:

1) It provides a resource for new societies to look at what other constitutions look like, so they can pull from what works, which means that coups d’etat are more likely to result in something other than a provisional dictatorship that accidentally becomes permanent. Because we have new states rising from the ashes of the old frequently. And…

2) It provides a place to crowdsource amendments to constitutions already in place (or to change current non-foundational ordinances). Right now, here in the US, we depend on our legislators to write laws, and they rely on their staffers who often have corporate allegiances, when they don’t receive bill text directly from corporate or special interest lobbyists directly. So it would create a place for the public to talk about it and have its own input.

Such a website was a no-brainer to me, so much so that I had assumed that it existed somewhere online. But no, no-one has made it.

I don’t have the skill it takes to start what might eventually become a sizeable project with lots of political enemies, like Wikipedia or Wikileaks. But maybe here on Lemmy creating an interested team would be easier.

For now it’s a pie-in-the-sky idea, as I wouldn’t have any idea how to begin it.

† This is the internet definition of all, id est as many as we could crowdsource.

Maybe don’t be a dick

And why do they serve them: All points back to the insane amount of money necessary to run a campaign (esp. at higher levels, vs billionaires, etc).

I didn’t hear much of anything about social spending, creating a ton of jobs or any plan at all for the federal govt to help the bottom 80% outside of “we’ll help families buy their first house” from the Kamala campaign. When we rolled into the last month and I still hadn’t heard about the big economic plan I knew we were cooked.

First houses are great and all but what about people who can’t afford their own place to live, or healthcare, or enough food? Folks have been living with parents since the pandemic, food banks are seeing record use right now and they campaigned on neoliberal business as usual with more growth for Wall St? “We’re very proud of Bidenomics”? Bidenomics did great pulling us out of the pandemic slump but then inflation happened and we never pivoted to giving folks any help getting back to where they were before the pandemic happened. Nor did we make a show of going after corporate profiteering, we just let that happen without a peep. What about mass layoffs over the last couple of years followed by record setting stock buybacks, dividend payouts and corporate profits?!

Your usual base of well off educated voters who see the long term stability and overall growth benefit Dems bring showed up of course but everyone else stayed home because more neoliberalism after 30y of that plan leaving 80% of us behind simply doesn’t inspire hope or excitement. Meanwhile you had the other guy shouting “I’ll break laws to change things!” Guess which of those is more popular right now?