• Optional@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    Yes, well, let’s all remember one little thing that is separate from whatever legislative and social wins he’s getting:

    The guy is good. Good at communicating, good at promotion, good at finding common ground. He’s not Che Guevara, he’s an upgraded Obama.

    He’s never going to be left enough for .ml, you can see right here they can’t wait to shit on him. What he’s teaching the Democrats is they’re old and busted. A party designed for television and radio.

    Plus, do you know how hard it is to be that kind of good at politics? It’s freakin rare. Sure if he could teach all the Dems how to be charming, persistent, kind, and knowledgable why won’t they listen? They’d love to listen but Joe Schmo in Topeka is basically an introvert who just wants to make his community happy.

    Has anyone here, on Lemmy, tried to run for office? If so, you probably found it’s basically a lifestyle that takes over everything; work, family, hobbies, health. Pointing to Mamdani and saying “Joe why can’t you be like that” isn’t a matter of just political positions. You’ve got to sell. Sell sell sell.

    And I hate selling. And salespeople (no offense). It’s . . . a problem for Dems. Republicans don’t have that problem. Any grifter or sleazeball can step right into a race in their sleep.

    • Worstdriver@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      I’ve run for office, and yeah, the running is a job all on its own. That and everything takes money.

      Campaign signs don’t print themselves, canvassers need to be paid, handbills need printers, venues need to be booked, offices need to be rented and all of it, all of it takes money that the majority of candidates simply don’t have on their own.

      Once you experience that you realize why a lot of politicians become corrupt, or at least corrupted by the system.

      • jellyfishhunter@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        Making political election campaigns illegal to even the field (and use the money for something beneficial) is worth a thought.

        No, I don’t know either if it’s even viable. But maybe someone smarter than me can make something out of that thought.

    • terwn43lp@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      wanna add that he’s young and grew up in the same situations that he’s actively working to fix

    • timbuck2themoon@sh.itjust.works
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      4 days ago

      That and his lesser touted positions are NOT popular outside deep blue NYC.

      I love the guy but he isn’t winning the Midwest with ALL his positions and it’s stupid and basic to think that. No one in Wichita wants government run grocery stores for instance.

      They certainly can take pointers from him but there’s a full cemetery of progressive candidates who have crashed and burnt outside deep blue areas.

      He’s exactly what NYC wants and needs. He wouldn’t be for every single place across the country.

        • wanderingmagus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          4 days ago

          Think about the reddest, most homophobic, bigoted, capitalist, Fox News brained person you can think of who thinks Black people are animals and Hispanic people are all drug smuggling cartel members and “illegals” “deserve” the camps. Now double the bigotry and then imagine a whole town full of that, and, like, one single scared gay kid. That’s not every town, but it’s a frighteningly large number, because America is a massive place and unfortunately with a continent this big you’ll end up with clusters where the outlier becomes the norm.

          • AmyAye@nord.pub
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            4 days ago

            This was probably almoat 20 years ago, in a small rural (like 5k people) Illinois town I used to love in. We were outside doing some yardwork, and this guy comes door to door selling some kind of cleaner.

            Black guy. Which I mention because its relevant.

            We chat for a bit, he demos the cleaner, at one point his friend calls so he takes the call.

            The friend, also clearly a black guy, is basically saying he is done and ready to leave and basically half the houses threaten to shoot him and keep calling him n***er.

            This is rural America, in general. This is MAGA.

            Anyway, we bought some cleaner, it seemed to work on the outside mold spots on the house.

      • Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        3 days ago

        Isn’t the midwest just saturated MAGA, white Christian nationalist and plain ol’ white supremacist? People who vote for centrists but not progressives have long since devoted their lives to the Trump god-king. They don’t care about anyone other than themselves, and may turn around because they’re personally hurt by the economy. But in that case, they’re voting against the incumbent, and don’t care who the opposition is, even if it’s a proverbial sack of potatoes.

        At this point Trump is personally responsible for everyone losing money. At least everyone but the handful of guys getting pardons and government contracts out of him.

        Harris lost by playing to the center, and an awful lot of polls are telling us that progressive platform ideas are popular.

        • timbuck2themoon@sh.itjust.works
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          2 days ago

          If you think centrists are fans of trump I don’t know what to tell you except that’s so far off I can’t believe it’s a thought.

          • Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            1 day ago

            Centrists voted for Trump in 2024, thinking egg prices would go down. (Or just terrified of immigrants and trans folks.)

            I have little confidence in centrists. (Or what counts as centrist in the United States.)

            But I do know that a lot of the progressive platform is popular:
            ~ Universal healthcare
            ~ A jobs guarantee
            ~ Higher education for all
            ~ National action on the climate crisis
            ~ Women’s reproductive healthcare access (including abortion)
            ~ Housing as a human right ~ Abolishing ICE and police reform
            …and so on

            All that isn’t centrist according to the Overton window. In fact, the far-right propaganda machine is asserting any one of those is a slippery slope to communism. So the majority of Americans who take polls are communist.

            I think that running on an actual platform is a winning move. Doubly so if candidates present a blueprint on how to implement it.

            I also think that none of this is enough. We’re going to have to address the democracy crisis and capture of the federal court system. Ultimately, according to Nobel laureate economists, we’re going to have to redistribute the immense wealth at the top. (That may be impossible, and if so, the entire industrial world may be doomed to capture and decline.)

      • AmyAye@nord.pub
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        4 days ago

        Except we basically already have that. Rural areas are littered with food pantries because rural people tend to be poor as fuck. Maybe they are run by voulonteers now, but why not cut out the hassle and add in some guaranteed funding and efficiency?

        • jtrek@startrek.website
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          3 days ago

          “dying of whiteness” is a fascinating book about whites voting against their own interests so those people don’t get anything nice

        • timbuck2themoon@sh.itjust.works
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          3 days ago

          You don’t have to convince me. You have to convince them.

          Look at Oklahoma- they just voted down a minimum wage increase. You think they’re on board with government run grocery stores?

      • Optional@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        Also true yeah. But “leftists” on here can’t get to that.

        The country is big. Big, big. Slogans only go so far.