The best way to gain engagement on social media is to lie about Democratic politicians. Until that incentive changes somehow, we will continue circling the drain.

The frustrating part of this is that people are *supposed* to lead, and politicians follow. That’s how all the most lasting change has happened in history, and it’s how our country was built. The activist left loves to talk about “people-driven politics” but really just want pols to lead for them.

Not that anyone cares, but the problem with this sort of thing is that people spend years negatively polarizing themselves (and, crucially, others) against those candidates. It’s fine except when it metastasizes into “I will NEVER vote for this person” à la left critics of Pete, Beto, Kamala, etc.

Biden went out and marched with a picket line, and did absolutely nothing to help his support with the base (after they more or less demanded he do it). Everyone needs to accept that acceding to social media demands win Democrats absolutely zero support from the people making those demands.

Whenever you ask people on social media to provide evidence of the claims they so confidently make, this is always how they respond. A good 80% of what you read on here (including this stat!) is completely made up.

Because just because people view it negatively doesn’t mean they don’t want it to exist. That is a leap of logic. This is a tightrope for Dems to walk. Pushing them off it helps no one.

People love to say shit like this, but the fact is, voters decide who becomes the president. There is literally no one else to blame. When the evil guy wins, the blame goes to the people who voted for him and those who didn’t vote at all. Everything else is obfuscation about how democracy works.

I think the thing I did not expect about the slide into fascism was just how much of it would be due to the complete obsession with attacking the opponents to the regime. Like these people are the only way out. And all people like this are doing is poisoning the well for them. We’re fucked.

Hate to tell you this Aaron but your real quarrel is with the Americans who are more concerned with affordability than a major American metro being brutally occupied by Trump goons, not Schumer for accurately reading the situation.

This is straight up Kim Jong-Il stuff.

You know, you could say that Trump's support could be divided into one basket of people who feel the government has let them down and one basket of deplorables.

Rarely have I seen this entire era of politics so perfectly encapsulated. Jamelle says, quite simply, "you go vote" and that somehow triggers a torrent of rage among internet leftists.

The core truth of the Trump era, and the one that journalism is forbidden from stating out loud, is that Trump has gathered around him a constituency of the country's worst people. That's what most distinguishes them -- not economic status, age, where they live, anything else. It's shittiness.

The goal with this stuff is to inoculate American minds to the word "insurrectionist." January 6 was an insurrection, and it was a key moment Trump lost his grip on even many Republicans. The last five years have been them trying to undo that by making the attack seem like normal partisan politics.

They also say, repeatedly, that they love theatricality and love putting on a show. They nearly always tell you what they're thinking!

It remains to be seen if this will work, but what is clear to me is that President Sanders demanding that the banks be broken up by fiat or that corporations cease greedflation probably would have been received by the media and public similarly to this. The bully pulpit isn't a panacea.

Time for "AOC is Better at Progressive Politics than the Social Media Left" Pt. 10013542830598

Bluesky is angrier at Democrats than it has been in months, and at the same time, Democrats are polling better than they've been in months. I think the takeaway isn't exactly what people On Here want it to be.

In fact, history has pretty clearly shown the only way you can get out of this mess is by voting.

I think the thing people don't really understand is that Walz is doing everything in his power to keep this from happening, because he knows how damaging it will be to Minneapolis. His job isn't to reflect your anger back at you. It's to run his state responsibly, including preventing civil war.

It's crazy to me that, after eight years of people ruthlessly deriding Democrats for focusing on Trump's threat to Democracy instead of economic issues, now they've completely done a 180. You all just are addicted to nitpicking Democrats. It's an actual, literal addiction.

All of this misses that they are currently trying to jail Tim Walz.

People have just fundamentally lost sight of what politics and elected government is about. The attempt to align activism and government has made both worse. To be clear: The MAGA movement 10000% is responsible for what's about to happen in this country. But rhetoric like this is just really broken

They are literally trying to Navalny him right now. Please understand that's what you're asking him to do.

This is true, but it's also worth considering what happens when he tries (which he seemingly will do). The Times isn't gonna run the "Trump tries to illegally cancel elections" headline. The media angle will be, "Trump wants to cancel elections. Can he?"

If we're playing the thought out here seriously, he can say that he orders the elections cancelled and then has Mike Johnson more or less either refuse to adjourn congress or refuse to seat any new members. Probably harder to do with the Senate.

I personally think it's bad that the "government is legitimate and serves important functions" faction is drawing so much from the Rush Limbaugh playbook in attacking Dems for voting for an appropriations act.

This entire era of politics, 2014 - today, is defined almost entirely by Twitter. The failure to be able to imagine what a post-Twitter politics looks like is embarrassing. Not for our elected leaders. For us.

The thing about MAGA is they have no secret plans. Trump tells you everything. He is literally begging to militarily occupy Minneapolis and arrest Gov. Walz and Mayor Frey. That is why they are begging protestors not to be violent. That is why they're not out with Will Stancil.

But have you considered that Kamala yelled at a protestor one time?

You can feel whatever kind of way you want about it but I for both practical and analytical reasons you sort of need to recognize that when Walz and Frey tell people to calm down and go home or the MPD disperses a crowd it is in the context of a credible threat of a military occupation of the city

All the people who are demanding Walz do more: Listen to this. They are trying to jail him.

People also hate to hear this but it's also more democratic to come from residents. The administration wants a fight between Blue state electeds, who nominally control things like the police, and ICE. This can help them portray this as a Dem insurrection. It being The People makes that harder.

Hard to see why the Clintons assumed this was an elaborate ploy to jail them.

It's worth noting nearly the entire modern internet is built on the backbone of Wikipedia. Your beloved LLMs more or less wouldn't exist without it.

I get this impulse and I do understand, but this is clearly what Trump wants to have happen. Jailing the opposition under false pretenses is exactly out of the Putin playbook. Giving the courts an excuse to "well, it was unorthodox, but not technically an illegal arrest" fast tracks the end here.

I think people really, really underestimate how ICE's sheer incompetence and unprofessionalism looks to people with even rudimentary training. They've done themselves zero favors with how obviously they escalate every single encounter, as well as how bad they are at working together.

absolutely astonishing how much the American press and public discourse is absent of any sense that this is actual reality rather than a mass entertainment happening entirely on our screens for our benefit

I would support them doing this, but people should be clear eyed about the risk. We’re at a tipping point right now. Shutting down the gov’t here (assuming the GOP won’t just open it on party lines) is the beginning of the end, one way or another. There’s no guarantee it’s the good ending, either.

This is driving me insane. Every media outlet is repeating this stuff as though it’s worth more than the paper it’s printed on. Repeating their lies makes you complicit. Doing so without even explaining how they are know liars is collaboration.

A reminder that the country turned “they’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats” into a meme. He told everyone what he was gonna do to immigrants. If you didn’t take it seriously, after 10 years, you are a fucking moron.

If everyone who posted on here whining about the Democrats called their Republican congresspeople, this whole thing would already be over. (I know you’re not all in fully blue areas. Come on.)

The problem with these platforms is that everyone is a public figure. When your post can spontaneously go viral and reach hundreds of thousands of people, you need to be careful what you say. Everyone just does the “im just a wittle poster” act and doesn’t take responsibility for disinformation.

This guy has been one of the loudest voices downplaying Trump’s fascism while holding Democrats to an impossible standard. Literally the perfect model of social media posters who are directly responsible for the current hell we live in (while blaming everyone else).

The Feds are trying to get a governor to activate the National Guard to constrain ICE, so they can claim Democrats are committing an insurrection. It’s the swift boat-ing of January 6.

This all dates back to the election where guys would not just shut the fuck up because the lady candidate reminded them of their mom, which for men, was a *bad* thing.

This is the way to push. “These morons SUCK!” does nothing. It doesn’t constrain ICE, and it helps the GOP. Acknowledging the benefit and supporting it while continuing to push. More of that.

To be clear, he is not being “more real” about ICE than Dems, who have called them Trump’s secret police (which is essentially the same.) People on this site love to give credit to Rogan and take it from Dems, despite the fact that only one of those actually tells people to oppose Trump (Dems)

The funniest part of these people’s bad faith is that all they had to do was vote for HRC and tell their friends to, and not only would Roe still be the law of the land, Citizens United would be overturned too. But seeming cool on the internet was more important. Alas.

Never forget that Josh Hawley (and JD Vance) voted for war here. This is a vote for war.