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This is a weird meme. The Democrats actively tried to court suburban white voters and other traditionally right-Leaning demographics. They tried to peel Republicans off. The democrats never offered socialists a cup labeled "liberalism", they offered "moderate republicans" a cup labeled "Border Control and Bush era political icons" and they said "Bro. I already told you I will only ever vote for Republicans".
WHeRe iS tHe leFt uNiTy
Buried with all of the socialists and unions liberals have betrayed.
If you go further Left
Marxist-Leninists: “WhERe iS tHe leFt uNiTy?”
Buried with all the Anarchists and Trotskyists cold bloodedly murdered by Lenin and Stalin.
"Further" left is demonstrably incorrect on account of all the genocide, union busting, and heirarchy enforcement they did, but otherwise yes, also true.
Yeah seriously, if there's a single thing we've learned from this whole election, is that the best thing for the left is to enforce absolute ideological purity!
We must not tolerate any unorthodoxy! Better to abstain than anything!
It's like you want to take this loss and make the lessons permanent...
Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, “Don’t do it!” He said, “Nobody loves me.” I said, “God loves you. Do you believe in God?”
He said, “Yes.” I said, “Are you a Christian or a Jew?” He said, “A Christian.” I said, “Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?” He said, “Protestant.” I said, “Me, too! What franchise?” He said, “Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?” He said, “Northern Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?”
He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?” He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region.” I said, “Me, too!”
Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?” He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912.” I said, “Die, heretic!” And I pushed him over.
- Emo Philips
You say that as if the DNCs campaign strategy wasn't to absolutely abandon the left and try to court "moderate republicans", which we very obviously just learned don't actually exist.
Apparently it wasn't so much that they don't exist, but that people are generally stupid and if inflation spikes during your term you're going to get the blame for it - even if your actions significantly limit inflation compared to the rest of the world.
Every government that was in power during the inflation rise and had an election this year lost voter share.
try to court "moderate republicans", which we very obviously just learned don't actually exist.
Exactly. For all their effort, all the campaigning with Liz Cheney, all the promises of Republicans in the cabinet, and all the war hawk endorsements, Harris lost votes with Republicans compared to Biden.
Republicans don't vote Democrat, stop running to the right to appease them. Democrats don't want to hear that shit either and you need them to show up to win, so how about courting their vote instead.
Enough. America is full of idiocy. Everywhere. This isn't a campaign issue it's an ignorance and bigotry issue.
I mean, the lessons are likely to be permanent, regardless. This might be the last few months of peace before the US turns into an authoritarian terror wasteland via project 2025. Hopefully it won’t, but all three branches of government have been compromised, which leaves little hope.
I love how anything outside of what the democratic party wants to do is labelled "ideological purity" even though democrats endlessly shriek at anyone who does not toe the democratic party line. Democrats had their way, again, and lost, again. How about we try something new instead of democrats constantly trying to appeal to fascists while pretending to be the only thing to stand against fascism?
Fixed that second panel because there isn't even a pretense of respect
It's good to see the old socialism vs liberalism appear again after the US-election. Cycles are a bit out of order lately.
Genuinely clueless and wanting to understand here
What's the difference between liberalism and leftism? My understanding of them is very nebulous and there's a lot of overlap
Liberalism is the ideology of capitalism.
In the US, socialism has historically been shunned and not represented in the political sphere, to the point that the right started using "liberal" derisively and associated the term with socialism. Internationally, the term retains more of its original meaning, for example, in the UK the "Liberal Democrats," are more like libertarians.
Liberals are generally conservative, meaning they support the status quo or gradual change. US "conservatives" are sometimes more accurately called reactionaries or regressives, because they don't just want to preserve the status quo but to actively roll back progress that has already been made.
Because leftism is a very broad term, it's difficult to define exactly what leftists believe in an uncontroversial way, but generally speaking leftists support radical change away from capitalism.
Liberalism is also quite a broad term, which on its own can only really be said to constitute a belief in "equal rights for everyone including the right to private property". The Liberal Democrats, for example, are so-called because they were formed from the merger of the (classically liberal) Liberal Party, and the Social Democratic Party. They are more like libertarians in the sense that they were broadly pro-market but less authoritarian than the tories, but their policy platform has always been more like something that would be described as social liberalism.
In my experience, the word liberal is generally not used so much in UK politics (outside of the name of the Lib Dems), but if someone self-described themselves as a liberal, I think it would be generally understood as socially liberal rather than libertarian.
The cause of the confusion:
Liberalism is the political project which gave us the 18th century liberal revolutions of for instance, the US and France. It centers invidivual freedoms like free speech, association, and the right to own and use private property without interference from the government. It can be seen as a reaction by the land owning middle classes of the 17th and 18th centuries to the power of divine right monarchs, and is the founding principal of both the Democratic and Republican parties. It centralizes human rationality and debate of ideas as means of finding true paths to the future.
Leftism is an umbrella term which holds a few groups in it (Most notably Social democrats, Communist Socialist, and Communist Anarchist ideologies). It can be traced back through history to many times and places, but modern forms of it originate in the utopian socialism of post-revolution France. Leftism promotes the primacy of human well being and equality (or at least more equally distributed material wealth) over property rights. Generally this takes the form of support for the abolition of class society (owner class vs worker class), belief in worker-centered policy, trade unionism, worker cooperativity, and internationalism... but again, it is a big umbrella, and there is a lot of deviation from this formula. In place of rationalism and debate of ideas, Leftism generally centers material conditions and material outcomes of policy.
Liberalism is a moral philosophy based on individual rights, liberty and equality - this is universally agreed apon terminology almost everywhere apart from here on Lemmy. Here for some reason people keep referring to classical capitalism as liberals like it's a historical discussion about the economic system of the 16th-18th centuries. We should really be using neoliberalism or libertarianism instead now days, because those are new words that evolved specifically to reduce confusion and refer to similar economic ideas but in modern context.
