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‘I hate Democrats, but I love Abdul’: voters who left over Gaza return for progressive push
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2026
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You win with the electorate you have, not the one you want.
People are idiots. Expect this.
If it’s this easy to win them back and the Democrats couldn’t even bother, who’s the real idiot? They thought they could discard these votes and found out they couldn’t. Figure out how to continue treating them like people with understandable sorrow about the genocide in Gaza, or keep losing 🤷♂️
There can be more than one idiot in a given situation
there are idiots, and then there are idiots with power. i never understand the people who protect the idiots with power and blame the idiots without.
Words to live by
"Vote for me cause if you don't then you're an idiot"
Good luck with that bro. No wonder genocide supporting Democrats keep losing
You've hit the nail on the head for why so many people have been upset and frustrated with how terrible the dems are. They'd rather lose votes to stay center than do anything that keeps voters voting for them
It's the USA, there is Right and Far Right, you've never ever had anything close to a left wing.
From were I stand (in Europe), it looks more like Hard Right (hardcore Neoliberals) and Fascists.
Mind you, here in Europe it's also shifted in that direction, just not as much as the US (except in the UK and Germany)
What makes you think they were genuinely trying to win? They have no interest in changing the status quo. It's been very good to them.
And that’s why they were genuinely trying to win. Centrist Dems are all about the status quo. This isn’t the status quo.
didn’t seem to be bothering them that much. the democrats have shown no onus to fight for the status quo. now progressives? watch them sweat to stop that from happening. the progressives already won in a land slide? watch as they keep spending money and time and effort into undermining him at every turn.
trump removes person hood from immigrants? thats a stern letter. fuck the democraric party
That’s the Democrats’ corpo faction
The progressives and the democratic socialists are the one who are fighting tooth and nail to make things better for us
the DNC is the corporate faction. they are spending all their money to harass their own base. and until they are all replaced, it will continue to be their DNC.
you don’t remove the corporate faction by voting blue no matter who.
you remove them by voteing blue only when it’s a progressive
I get the impression that the people who pay them thought they themselves would be alright either way, which is why the establishment Democrats for all their talk about how crucial it was to defeat Trump, repeatedly made politically choices of the far-right kind (supporting the Genocide in Gaza, cozying up with the Cheney family) that antagonized many of their natural voters.
Mind you, Trump is so spectacularly incompetent that even with all the very explicit things he's doing to help the wealthiest (most notably in terms of taxes) he might very well still hurt their interests more than he helps, them by turning America's greatest trade partners against anything American (most notably Canada and the EU).
Everyone is an idiot. The Dems, the voters, the pollsters, the Republicans, everyone. Me included.
I'm not
Nobody is immune to propaganda.
That's exactly what an idiot would say!! grips tinfoil hat more tightly
It's also what a genius would say taps head
True.
But there's more than one perspective. Do you, as a political party or government as a whole, abandon an ally you have all sorts of ties with because a sub-section of your voters don't like that country anymore? I mean the answer is yes if you know you'll lose enough voters to lose elections, but there's no way they could have known that.
The proper method is to start drawing lines with the ally and see if they cross them. Biden essentially did that. Maybe not as aggressive as necessary. He did verbally state he was against what Israel was doing. He did float arms shipment cancellations to Israel. He did try to broker a peace deal. These were reasonable steps. What was unreasonable was a ton of voters expecting a full disconnection from Israel or they would not vote or vote 3rd party, which would only help a much, much worse president from taking control and giving Israel/Netanyahu two big thumbs up to do whatever they wanted.
Given the, you know, genocide, the answer is "yes.*
Yeah, it's not like there was a whole mass movement saying exactly that.
Which they did, every single time. Where are the consequences?
Ronald Reagan got the IDF to stop firing on Beirut after a 20 minute phone call. That's a reasonable step; what Biden did was theater.
Yeah, it’s because of the Democrats’s corpo faction
They are ones who write sternly worded letters and do nothing to stop trump
Abdul and the other progressive candidates winning the nominations this year are not because "the Democrats" are trying when they weren't before, it's because the electorate came out to vote in the primaries when they did not before. The nominees are selected by the voters who come out during the primaries. So when the electorate isn't showing up to pick the nominee, then they shouldn't complain about the party "running" bad nominees.
Im kind of with you, but are you suggesting the DNC would support progressive candidates if more voters showed up to vote in the primary?
the old guards do not want more AOCs or even bernees in congress. they only allow 1 of each in the houses because they give them something to hide behind as a pretend to be on the "left".
Looks like slightly less people showed up, actually (typical for a non presidential primary):
https://apps.npr.org/primary-election-results-2024/states/MI.html
https://apps.npr.org/primary-election-results-2026/states/MI.html
Michigan has open primaries and there was one uncontested Republican running this year, look at the total votes in 2024 vs 2026 and not just the blue numbers.
Yeah comparing to 2022 would be better. I can't seem to find that on the NPR site, though it doesn't appear to list the actual turnout percentage, just the number of votes. I have this site but it doesn't break it down by party and doesn't have 2026 data yet. It shows 27% primary turnout for Michigan in 2022 and 24% in 2024.
https://statesunited.org/resources/voter-turnout-since-2000/
With turnout that low in the primaries, it really shouldn't take a big surge for progressive voters to tip the scales away from neoliberal incumbent/establishment candidates.