[vkou]

> It was exciting to finally see the first real pushback in the last administration under Lina Khan. So many upset businessmen on TV! Unfortunately, elections have consequences, and the work did not continue.

Perhaps one of the consequences of her actually pushing back on this was one of the many reasons the owner class overwhelmingly backed Trump.

[smallmancontrov]

Do you propose continuing to not push back instead? That'll show 'em!

Populism is in the air, and for good reason. Lina Khan's FTC was not all they feared, but if it had been, our mistake would have been one of not going far enough.

[throwawaysleep]

Make a deal with big ag to cap food price growth in exchange for allowing ANYTHING they do to farmers. They can squeeze as hard and in as monopolistic a manner as they please on that end.

Kill two birds with one stone.

Farmers have a lot of equity that corporates could be given in exchange for lower food prices.

[NewJazz]

Prices aren't everything. Excessive pesticides can make cheap produce have negative health effects and thus a worse value. Poor soil chemistry can make cheap produce less nutritious and thus a worse value.

[toomuchtodo]

~78% of farmers voted for him. They are directly responsible for their own outcome in this regard.

Canada supplies 75-80% of US potash imports, and potash is a non-substitutable input in agriculture; without it, crop yields drop significantly. China no longer buy soybeans from US farmers, and instead now sources from South America; they have made a token 12M ton purchase, as they promised.

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/farmers-bailout-tr...

> Ragland, for example, supported Trump dating back to 2016, making him just one of many in rural America. Trump won a majority of USDA “farming-dependent” counties ahead of his first term, and within a year of assuming office, his trade wars drove American farm exports to China down from $19.5 billion to $9 billion. Ultimately, farmers saw a decline of $27 billion in agricultural exports, nearly 71 percent of that attributable to soybean profit losses. Ragland, a soybean farmer, still turned right back around and voted for Trump again in both 2020 and 2024. Here again, he was just one of many. Farmers increased their support for Trump by 5 percent in 2020, hitting 76 percent support, and then added another 2 percent in 2024, reaching 78 percent support. In 100 of the country’s 444 “farming-dependent” counties, according to Investigate Midwest, Trump won a whopping 80 percent of the vote.

> “So they voted for this guy three times—all these white farmers did. And now this president has turned agriculture in this country to the worst [shape it’s been in] since the ’80s. Farm bankruptcies. Farm foreclosures. Farm suicide [My note: farmer suicides are 3.5x-4x the general population]. Input costs—all these things,” Boyd told me.

https://investigatemidwest.org/2024/11/13/trump-election-far...

> Not only did Trump increase his support among farming-dependent counties, but more than 100 of those counties supported him with at least 80% of their vote.

This is entirely self inflicted, which to me, is wild and a case study for history. This was a collective choice, intentionally made.

[pear01]

Farmers like Ragland are overrepresented.

Why do these rural states (several of which have a total population less than that of major metro areas on the coasts) have two senators?

The senate is an antidemocratic institution. The compromise that every state gets two senators made sense when we were a weak, newborn and vulnerable nation, with a total population of less than 3 million people. Not anymore. The founders likely didn't want people like Ragland to have the vote anyway. They were not salt of the earth farmers they were largely plantation and merchant and legal elites. Ragland is the dumb mob rule they feared.

Maybe the 17th amendment was a mistake. At the very least, why stop there? The constitution is not sacred, as established and as written, the founders would have given Ragland less representation.

Perhaps in the spirit of actual democracy and modern reform, it is time to revisit the idea that every state gets two senators. Given what is really going on here is these states vote against their own interests and then rob blue states to cover up the shortfall. Why are blue states tolerating it?

It would be one thing if it was just about money, but it's not. These populations are being deputized in a culture war that tells them to hate you while they take your money. They need a reality check.

[dboreham]

Meta-answer: whenever you ask a question "why...<crazy thing> is done in the US", the answer will turn out to be "something something slavery" or the related "something something racism".

[jmyeet]

This is an example of taking the wrong lesson from history.

The lesson from the last 20 years is that voters consistently vote to people who speak to their interests and their problems. The biggest electoral landslide in this time is Obama in 2008 and second place isn't even close. Obama ran as a progressive. He didn't govern as one but that's not really the point. Although it's a big part of the reason of why we're here now.

There has (now) been a 50+ year trend of declining living conditions and real wages. People are getting loaded up with debt essentially to make wealthy people even wealthier. Everything has been getting worse.

This was the turning point of the 2016 election. Trump's talk of being an outsider (he isn't), draining the swamp (he didn't) and talking to actual voter concerns was what propelled him to the nomination. And the victory because Hilary Clinton was such a dogshit bad candidate who thought she could win running as a generic corporate Democrat. You know who else run with populist messaging? Bernie Sanders. A nontrivial number of people who voted for Bernie in the primaries voted for Trump in the general. This might confuse you if you think of this as a purely Democratic-Republican divide. It wasn't and it isn't.

So why do farmers keep voting for Trump even though he now has a record of screwing them over? Because he speaks to their interest and their problems where Democrats don't talk to them at all.

2024 was a textbook example of how to intetnionally run a campaign to lose the biggest lay up election in history. No real policies. Ordinary people do not care about tax credits for small businesses. That doesn't help anyone who is struggling to afford rent and food.

So you can say "you made your bed now lie in it" to the farmers but does that help you? Does that help the country? The Democratic Party is complicit in everything that's happened by their intentional inaction and choice to lose.

[toomuchtodo]

The lesson is not for me, the lesson is for these farmers who will go bankrupt, lose their farms and land, and commit suicide in some quantities of each. Perhaps don't trust someone who only tells you what you want to hear, and yet never delivers. Most unfortunately, the lesson will fall on deaf ears while we all carry on. A cautionary tale, for sure. Sometimes we trust the wrong people. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

> So you can say "you made your bed now lie in it" to the farmers but does that help you? Does that help the country?

If there are less voters like this over time, yes, I put forth that will help the country (~2M 55+ voters age out every year, ~5k per day). Whether the country is worth saving, we can save for another thread. If someone won't change their mind, nor their vote, you've arrived at an impasse. You can only wait for time to work. Again, very unfortunate.

> The Democratic Party is complicit in everything that's happened by their intentional inaction and choice to lose.

"They made me do it." is not an argument. You vote for the chainsaw, you get the chainsaw. My understanding was that conservatives held personal responsibility as a core belief. Am I mistaken? Better luck next election cycle.

I take no pleasure in discovering that this is reality. It brings me great sadness. "We must take the world as it is and not as we would like it to be." -- Maurice

[jmyeet]

No candidate is owed votes. Candidates must earn votes. If voters didn't vote for your candidate, your candidate failed. The voters didn't fail. The candidate did. And what we have in the modern Democratic Party is an intentional choice not to promise or do anything but to expect votes and simply say "Trump bad" (which he is). That's not a policy platform. And people, rightly, rejected it.

If that creates problems for you (and, let's face it, it creates problems for everyone but the billionaires at this point), you should direct your anger at the candidates not the voters, particularly when the candidate was dogshit with no policies.

Old people dying isn't going to solve this problem. They're being replaced by young (particularly male) voters who are disenchanted, disenfranchised, disempowered and disillusioned because they have nothing to hope for as society is crumbling around the and they have no future.

If you want more people to vote for your candidates, they have to offer them something. It's really that simple.

People not voting for someone who doesn't speak to their issues and offers them nothing is quite literally the least surprising and most predictable outcome.

[runako]

> what we have in the modern Democratic Party is an intentional choice not to promise or do anything but to expect votes

Do people really believe this? That there are no policy programs from Democratic candidates? Nothing on healthcare, childcare, eldercare, education, housing, energy? Just no promises at all?

I ask because that is obviously false, but it seems to be a common misapprehension. I'm wondering what candidates could do beyond talking about their policies at length (which they do) that would get people to believe that they have policies.

[jmyeet]

> Do people really believe this?

It's objectively true.

> That there are no policy programs from Democratic candidates?

Does increasing ICE funding count [1]?

> Nothing on healthcare, childcare, eldercare, education, housing, energy? Just no promises at all?

Literally none of those things. The Democratic Platform is "Trump bad" and to be a nicer, gentler face on fascism.

> I ask because that is obviously false

What policies do Democrats actually stand for?

This is so obviously true that you need look no farther than the NYC mayoral election. Zohran Mamdani came from nowhere to win the the Democratic primary on a fairly simple platform of universal childcare, cheaper food, faster and free buses and freezing the rent (on rent stabilized apartments). Those are all concrete policies. Less than one month into his administration and we hvave a pilot program for childcare [2].

And what was the Democratic Party response? Democratic Party leaders (eg Schumer, Jeffries, Booker) would not endorse him, despite him winning the primary. Some tepid endorsements came late. Instead the Democratic Party with a wink and a nod ran a spoiler candidate, Andrew Cuomo, who previous had to resign in disgrace from being governor after multiple allegations of sexual harassment.

Think back to what Kamala ran on. Not stopping the genocide, not even calling it a genocide (both positions of which were highly popular with the base, even more than a year ago), a tax credit for small business, having the "most lethal" (her words) military and an immigration plan that was indistinguishable from the Trump 2020 immigration plan, including building the wall that the Democrats had previously campaigned against. She mentioned "price gouging" one time. That was hugely popular because it was the one thing that went to the affordability crisis. But she never mentioned it again because Wall Street didn't like it. Nothing about healthcare or the cost of rent or education. Not a thing.

> I'm wondering what candidates could do beyond talking about their policies at length (which they do)

Who talks about affordability, housing, healthcare and inflation "at length"? There are a handful of Congresspeople who do (eg AOC) but it's not a party position and certainly none of the out 2028 presidential wannabes talk about it.

Here's a little test for you. Whenever they talk they'll usually say that someone (usually Trump) is bad. Maybe they'll say a certain situation is bad (eg high rents). Whenever a candidate or ap olitician does that, the very next thing out of their mouth should be a solution. "Yes rents are high and I'm going to tackle this by doing X, Y and Z." Every problem should be followed a solution. If you don't hear a solution, it's just empty platitudes.

But the Democratic Party doesn't do that. They don't like making promises because then they can't be held to promises they never made.

> ... that would get people to believe that they have policies.

Progressive policies are poular. Democratic pooliticians are not. One of my favorite examples of this is Missouri. Trump won the state by 19. There was a ballot initiative to increase the minimum wage, an obviously prograssive policy. It won by 15. So this progressive policy outperformed Kamala by 34 in a deep red state. Put another way, 17% of the voters who voted in 2024 in Missouri showed up to vote for Trump AND to increase minimum wage.

This isn't a messaging problem. The Kamala campaign spent over $100 million in Pennsylvania and didn't move the needle. It's a platform problem.

[1]: https://www.newsweek.com/cory-booker-ice-proposal-progressiv...

[2]: https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2026/01/20/...

[autoexec]

> If voters didn't vote for your candidate, your candidate failed. The voters didn't fail. The candidate did.

Voters aren't immune from failure. Voters fail when they stay home and don't bother to vote at all, when they remain ignorant/uneducated, when they vote for a party/team instead of the candidate, etc.

It's tempting to let voters off the hook when candidates lie to their faces but ultimately it falls on voters to be aware of the track record of the candidates, be educated on the issues, and use a little critical thinking. I certainly can't feel too bad for them when they reelect a candidate who already screwed them over once already. Everyone knows the old saying: "Fool me once, shame on... shame on you. Fool me... you can't get fooled again."

[jmyeet]

> Voters aren't immune from failure.

Hard disagree. Voters are never at fault. It is incumbent upon the candidate to give the voters something to vote for.

> ... they stay home and don't bother to vote at all

Because they had nothing to vote for. Candidate's fault.

So what you've touched on is what's called "lesser evil voting", an idea that it is the voter's responsibility to engage in harm reduction. For too long the Democratic Party has relied on this to do nothing by just being a gentler face on fascism. Some might say you're rewarding that behavior by turning up to vote for them anyway, even when they offer you nothing. Millions stayed home in 2024 because they were offered nothing. That's the only power voters had and they exercised it. And I said at the time that the Democratic Party will learn nothing and change nothing as a result of a devastating loss in the easiest lay up of all time.

[watwut]

> The lesson from the last 20 years is that voters consistently vote to people who speak to their interests and their problems

This is false. Trump did not spoken to their problems.

He spoken to their hate, to they wish to harm other people. He is a crook and that appealed to them - they want to steal like him.

They voted for Trump, because they like seeing abuse. That was super clear, if you actually listen to what they say.

[loeg]

Obama did not run as a progressive, lol.

Much of the rest of this is equally ahistorical. Living conditions and wages haven't gotten worse over the past 50 years.

[Spooky23]

Were you in high school or elementary then?

Obama ran on “hope” and “change” very foofy stuff. Ultimately you may be able to support your position by virtue of his saying very little at all.

Wages have in fact fallen for the majority of people in real terms.

[loeg]

Again, wages have not fallen in real terms. You're just making this up.

[jmyeet]

You must be young because nobody who lived through his campaign would say that.

He was anti-war. In 2007-2008. Only a few years when the majority of Democrats voted in favor of the Iraqi War Resolution, something that helped sink Hilary Clinton's 2008 bid. He ran on universal healthcare. He ran on renewable energy. He ran on increased LGBTQ rights.

He won Iowa by 9 doing this. To a war hero. Kamala lost by 13. To a convicted felon who had a track record of screwing over farmers.

[triceratops]

> when the majority of Democrats voted in favor of the Iraqi War Resolution

The majority of Democrats in the Senate voted in favor (29-21). In the House a much larger majority voted against (81-126) the resolution.

A total of 7 Republicans voted against the resolution. Between both chambers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_for_Use_of_Milit...

[GenerWork]

>He won Iowa by 9 doing this. To a war hero.

He won Iowa by 9 due to the fact that the war in Iraq was incredibly unpopular and the economy was imploding.

[techdmn]

Completely agree. Trump is selling the wrong solutions, but many people hear a truth when he tells them they are getting screwed. Democrats insist that business as usual is great and simply extort voters: "It votes for a broken healthcare system, a broken electoral system and increasing income inequality or it gets the orange fascist again."

Biden / Harris also essentially offered voters the Trolley Problem. If you don't pull the lever Trump will fund genocide. If you do pull the lever, we will also fund genocide, but maybe less genocide.

If your campaign can be described as an instance of a classic ethical dilemma, maybe the problem isn't the voters? At the very least, if Democrats 2024 campaign rhetoric is to be believed, funding genocide was more important to them than maintaining U.S. democracy.