Hayden Christensen? Yeah, I agree. It’s not his fault Lucas can’t write normal human interactions.

I think so. I remember Anakin delivering the line, “I killed them all. Not just the men, but the women! And the children!” in such a ham-fisted way that I actually LOLed in the theater. But I also haven’t seen those movies in at least 10 years.

To be fair, he did also kill an entire village of Tusken Raiders, including women and children, one movie before that. It’s just that those movies are so weird and disjointed that this doesn’t feel like a piece of character building that later pays off in the third movie, but rather a weird fever dream that you forget about almost entirely by the time Attack of the Clones is finished

The party that ran a populist message won. When their economic situation is dire, people turn to populist leaders. When there’s no populist movement in the left (usually some for of socialist/labor movement) they turn to right-wing populism (fascism). Democrats spent the last 12 years stamping out any kind of pro-labor movement that started in their party in favor of neoliberal centrism, and now their losing to right-wing facism.

Edit: Oh, just saw the shit you added! You know, when a physicist finds out that their experiment contradicts their hypothesis, they have to admit their theory is wrong! They don’t just run the exact same experiment again in 8 years and expect a different outcome. That’s why physics is a real science and political science isn’t!

I’m just so fucking tired of hearing why the policies that I and most of the country want are unpopular from people who can’t win a fucking election.

Yeah, except progressive positions are broadly popular. Raising billionaire and corporate taxes? Popular. Single-payer healthcare? Popular. Universal Basic Income?Popular. Bernie Sanders? Still pretty fucking popular!

Meanwhile, how popular was the flaccid centrist platform the Democrats put up this year? Is Kamala gonna be president? Are they gonna keep the Senate? Is the house looking good? No? Then maybe it’s time for all the popularity experts in the Democratic party to shut the fuck up.

Democrats aren’t progressives. Maybe if they were, they wouldn’t lose all the time.

Oh, I get to blame it on anything I like? Really? Then I’m going to blame it on Democratic party that was actively working against Sanders, a coordinated effort to anoint Biden after he won South Carolina, an actively hostile media, and a billionaire who spent his on money on anti-Bernie ads. There were more headwinds against Bernie in those primaries than there were against Hillary, Biden, and Kamala in the general. Stop pretending that it was just, “people picked Biden,” FFS.

You’re right, I forgot that Bloomberg was still in and running a campaign entirely designed to block Bernie. Nothing says, “Democracy,” like an oligarch entering an election and using his personal wealth to undermine another candidate, right?

Except it wasn’t just him and Bernie. It was also Warren, so the progressive vote was spit, while the centrist vote was coordinated around Biden. Nice try though!

I think you’re forgetting the part where Clinton paid off the DNC’s debts and became it’s only financial lifeline, for which DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz abdicated control of party to Clinton’s team long before she secured the nomination.. Or that the AP controversially called the primary for Hillary just before California voted, giving voters the impression the primary was over before voting finished. Or that the DNC argued in court that they had no obligation give Bernie a fair, democratic primary. Or that Representatives Ford and Smith admitted the party did coalesce around Biden in 2020 to block Bernie. Or that polls had Bernie beating Trump by a wider margin than Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020.

Maybe they are, but as it turns out, getting them to show up and vote for you is actually kinda important. So maybe she should have done that.

Well, maybe they should have run a campaign of anti-genocide, not less genocide, especially because genocide is a fucking boolean value.

Whose job was it to win the election, the voters or the candidate? The Harris team looked at the polling, said no, and lost. Put the blame where it fucking belongs.

I’ll also add that you need to primary basically anyone that has been in politics for more than 15 years. There is just too much, “common sense,” in this party that is just wrong. In 2016, it was smart to run a centrist campaign that tried to move moderates away from Trump, and it failed. In 2024, they ran the same fucking campaign, and it failed.

There are well intentioned people that somehow still think that the 1992, third-way strategy will deliver gains through incrementalism, and it’s just not going to happen. Primary them, so that they at least have to contend with the new political realities. Trump picked up working class voters across across all demographics, not just the white working class. Everyone wants change; offer real change.

Do they think your odds get better if you’re get thrown down a metal tube on impact?

Sooner or later, you will get trapped somewhere forever. Over the course of an infinite lifespan, the odds that a building collapses on you or a tunnel caves in on you basically become 100%. Someday, you will fall into the hole that you will stay in until the sun explodes, and then you will drift in the void until the heat death of the universe.

Yup. We gotta vote for them this election, but replace them in the next. Otherwise, we’re just hitting snooze on fascism for another 4 years.

What about my original comment led you to believe I thought they were equivalent? As I said, Republicans are vile, hateful, and exploiting our political divisions for power. But the Democrats are just as responsible for the material conditions that have allowed facism to flourish, and demanding accountability and change for that isn’t nitpicking. If the Democrats don’t stop being corporate stooges, this doesn’t end if Trump is defeated; it ends when another fascist finally wins.

History didn’t start in 2016. The Democrats were happy to cozy up to the Silicone Valley tech giants, even as they developed into monopolies whose products gave users the very brain-poisoning that delivered Trump. They were happy to prioritize Wall Street bailouts over homeowners’ bailouts after the subprime mortgage crises, even if meant their constituents lost their homes. They’ve been happy to sideline or undermine anyone who dares run to their left, from Bernie Sanders to Rashida Tlaib.

The Democrats are not well-meaning, helpless progressives that just can’t get anything done because of America’s byzantine political structure. They have actively stopped any significant changes to the status quo in order to keep their donors happy. They’ve spent decades deluding themselves into thinking they could somehow improve conditions for the working class without demanding concessions from the billionaire class, even as the largest wealth transfer in history, from the lowest income Americans to the highest income Americans, was taking place. They may not be as vile or hateful as the Republicans, but they are just as responsible for America’s decay.