It doesn’t matter how good the restaurant is if all their advertising says, “we put bugs in our food!” It is kinda useless to consider how good the Kamala presidency might have been, how much of her campaign she would or would not have followed through on. People made their choice based on what she said she would do, and people did not like what she was promising.

It is possible that she would have given less weapons to Isreal, but that’s not what she said she would do. It’s possible that she would have reined in ICE and defunded them, but that’s not what she said she would do. It’s possible that she would have protected the rights of minority groups, but that’s not what she said she would do. Even if Kamala Harris had a perfect voting record and had a history of supporting progressive changes, I think it would be very reasonable to become skeptical of her based on her campaign promises.

When you say, “They’re fucking dumb”, it feels like you have no interest in understanding or changing why people make “less than optimal choices”. The thing I don’t endorse is disengaging from politics. I would like more people to be more active in politics because I believe in people power.

I 100% agree with you that people should be more active in politics and trying to change things for the future, but lesser evil politics is a very big reason we are in this mess right now. Because the Democratic Party has constantly been offering garbage options, people have decided to disengage from politics. People would rather jump off a burning building than die to the flames.

During her campaign, Kamala Harris promised to go after “illegal immigrants” and create the most lethal military in the world. The DNC just released a report claiming that Trans people were a weight around Harris’ neck that she should have abandoned. When asked if she would change things from Biden era policies on Isreal, she claimed nothing would change under her tenure.

I voted for Harris because I wanted Trump to lose, but it really seemed like a vote for Harris was a vote to harm the marginalized, the minority, the child, and the disabled. A lot of people heard what was said and saw actions enacted and decided not to vote for either party because they saw the options presented as, “harm lots” or “harm lots but with pride stickers”.

People make decisions for reasons beyond a cold-blooded cost benefit analysis. Sometimes, when faced with an ultimatum, people will pick the worse option out of spite, especially if they are presented with the ultimatum repeatedly. If the only choices are dying quick and dying slow, hopeless people will pick “the less optimal option”.

To be clear, I do not endorse this. This analysis is not justification. However, it is important to understand why this behavior happens in order to change things. If we want people to “stop picking the less optimal option”, they need to be presented with better choices.

CNN sprinkled in a bunch of little comments all throughout the report that seemed designed to excuse the DNC’s poor performance.

The report seems to keep to generalities instead of calling out specific mistakes the Harris campaign made. It seems to leave it up to the readers imagination on how to “…connect with voters on issues they say matter most including the economy, disaster relief, and addressing housing affordability.” (pg 22).

“I accidentally removed access for myself, haha. Google AI is crazy, huh?”

The big problem with more harm is that people will go looking for a solution. The solutions they’ll find are either socialism or fascism. The Republican party is all in on fascism, while the Democratic party is doing their best to suppress socialism. Fascism is the increasingly likely future at the moment, so accelerating towards that decision point is not currently a good idea.

Progressives are currently fighting the establishment Democrats to make socialism an option, and it is unfortunately going to take time to beat out the Democratic dinosaurs. It would be a very dangerous gamble at the moment to ask people to choose what kind of future we should pursue without having the better option lined up.

I do think progress is being made though, even in these difficult times. New York City recently elected a Socialist for mayor, and across the country, Progressives are coming into positions of power. The establishment Dems are fighting the change tooth and nail and the Republicans are trying to enact fascism, but I don’t think the battle for a better future is so lost to the point where blowing everything up is preferable.

Vienna has over 60% of people living in government subsidized affordable housing. California has less than 5% of people living in government subsidized affordable housing. Do you think that Vienna just has more money to spend on affordable housing than California?

Money is not the problem. This is an already solved problem. The only reason homelessness exists is because a few wealthy people benefit from high housing prices. All we need to do is just copy Vienna’s homework. Instead, right wingers are copying USA’s homework and now homelessness has increased in Vienna for the first time in a decade.