Odds are really good he’ll die of a heart attack while in office, but unfortunately that means Vance becomes President and that’s honestly even scarier than Trump. Vance couldn’t have won by himself, but the amount of damage he could do when handed the presidency is staggering.

It’s somewhat ironic that decentralized web is now considered a new concept, since that’s how the web started. Ultimately the problem is that not only does centralization have many benefits, it also aligns with human nature. The perfect system is a centralized one run by a benevolent entity, but the worst possible one is a centralized one run by a malevolent entity. Unfortunately as has been demonstrated time and again even if a company starts benevolent, given enough time and the corrosive nature of capitalism, it will eventually become malevolent (the so called enshittification). So we eventually arrive at a poor compromise, a mediocre distributed experience that struggles to attract and retain users, but which is resistant to the worst problems of centralized systems.

Lemmy and other federated systems will likely never be the platforms of choice for the majority of users, but what they’ll likely have is staying power. While centralized platforms rise and fall, decentralized platforms will just… keep existing. Nodes may die, new ones will rise, but the system as a whole will survive.

The issue isn’t international trade, you’d have these exact same problems with no trade happening at all. The issue is unregulated (or poorly regulated) markets. So many monopolies and duopolies, and the most extreme income inequality. They need to start taxing the fuck out of the billionaire class and breaking up corporations like it’s an Olympic sport and they’re going for gold. Bring back 90%+ taxes on the billionaires.

Yep, I see it with my own video feed. I’ll watch a video with the faintest right wing connection, say something about a game studio struggling with trolls. Then I’ll start getting videos suggested bitching about “woke games”. I tell it not to suggest those videos and they’ll go away for a little bit, but eventually it starts trying to creep them back in. The algorithm is constantly trying to push people to the extremes.

Tariffs alone will never build a domestic base. They can be part of a strategy to do that, but they must be paired with subsidies and tax breaks. It’s very expensive to develop a manufacturing base, so it must be done strategically. Generally it’s only worth doing for critical infrastructure and basic necessities. It’s part of why the US has focused primarily on food production and power.

I still blame the Democrats, they’re a shit party that talks a big game then utterly fails to deliver on it again and again, and Kamala was somehow even worse than average. But they’re not entirely to blame, there were a lot of factors that went into this loss. A couple of the bigger ones I think were the Republicans mastery of propaganda (helped along by foreign actors), and the generally poor education in the US. Republicans have spent literally half a century now perfecting how to push peoples buttons and Fox “News” and their shows are a master class in lying just well enough to convince the ignorant. Added to that was Twitter with its army of bots both foreign and domestic with Musk providing cover to them.

Like every Democrat for the last forever I didn’t like her policies in general although there were a couple that weren’t terrible. On the other hand I would have gladly taken all her policies over the absolute shit storm that Trump is about to rain on this country. The closest thing to a Democrat I liked was when Bernie ran on the Democrat ticket, but then the DNC did everything in their power to fuck him over. Maybe he would have lost anyway, but he never even really got the chance, so I guess we’ll never really know.

They needed a blend of both. Explain in detail your plan, but pair it with simple slogans and sound bites. That way you cover all your bases, the low information voters get motivated by the sound bite and the high information voters by your detailed plans (assuming they’re good). You can of course have a terrible plan that loses the high information voters even if your sound bites are keeping people engaged.

When the bar is just that low literally anything can be the most in decades.

It wasn’t more than half the country, in total 65% of the country voted for any candidate. Trump got about 55% of that, or a bit over 36% of the country. That’s still way higher than it should be, but well below half. There’s a bunch of possible explanations for why the remaining 35% of the country didn’t vote, and only some of those explanations would be tacit support of Trump.

Biden would have done just as bad as Harris because Harris ran on Biden’s platform plus a little extra helping of GOP policies (for some stupid fucking reason). OK, Biden might have done slightly better, but not enough to actually win. Anyone who stood a chance of winning would have to run on essentially the opposite of Biden’s policies instead of pulling Kamala’s “nope, wouldn’t change a single thing” platform.

I’m not sure exactly what the point of this article is. It doesn’t actually allege any wrongdoing, and it seems he hasn’t been to Russia since Zalinsky took office. Even prior to that there could have been innocent explanations for his travel to Russia. Basically this is some smoke, but no actual evidence of fire. It certainly raises some eyebrows, but considering those eyebrows were already raised prior to this this doesn’t really seem to be adding anything new.

Not sure exactly the point you’re trying to make, but you’re half right. It is a politicians job to convince voters to support their policies, that’s true, but it’s also equally true that voters should support good policies. While it’s not their “job” to do so, they still suffer the consequences for failing to do so all the same. No matter how you slice it, people were stupid to not listen to Bernie all this time.

Was just in a very long thread with him, but he seems to think economic issues are exclusively centrist.

There’s left wing economic policies as well. Running on anti-monoploy and increased taxes on the rich, would be an excellent way to go further left and is exactly I think what a lot of people were looking for this election. Ignoring the economy is never a winning strategy unless the economy is already doing really well which it very much isn’t.

Left isn’t just social policies, it’s economic policies as well. She should have been talking about inflation and housing this election in addition to things like abortion. Instead she decided to focus on border control and foreign policy, two Republican talking points, and even worse she decided to go right on both of them.

She got handed a losing Biden campaign that was on fire, and thought the smart move was to double down on his policies that were already losing him the election, and then to throw in some Republican talking points. It was very obviously a losing strategy no matter how little time she had. The Democrats have been relying on “not Republicans” to carry them to victory for so long they seem to have forgotten why people vote for them over the Republicans.

Unfortunately if history is anything to go by they’ll still find some way to blame their suffering on anyone but Trump and the Republicans.

I replied to your other comment where you said basically the same thing, but the short version is there clearly isn’t enough center voters for that to be a winning strategy. If they try that next election (If there even is a next election) it’s going to be an even more lopsided victory for the Republicans.

I don’t think there’s enough center left for them to go any harder center without going further left. They were already running on a bunch of right wing Republican policies. They’ve only got three options. Go harder right and actually become diet Republicans (all the oligarchy, but only half the fascism!). Stay exactly where they are. Or go left and return to being mildly progressive. They’ve shown that where they are currently is a losing proposition, so realistically their option is to try to appeal to the middle of the Republican base, or walk back some of their right shift of the last few decades. I don’t think they’re going to be able to successfully out Republican the Republicans so they’ve really only got one viable play.