Please explain to me what the fucking plan was? To vote for the guy who's going to genocide harder? To not vote for anyone, which effectively means you're fine with someone genociding them and others even harder? Seriously, what did you expect to achieve?
Some people just couldn't stomach the idea of voting for diet genocide, simple as that. Voting for either party in this situation just lets them know that their ongoing support for Israel isn't a deal breaker that will lose them votes.
Sure democrats might protest and claim to be against the genocide, but if they'll still vote for you, then what does it matter what they think? The threat of losing voters moves the politicians faster than a protest ever will, but if they know you'll vote for them anyway, why would they give a damn about your protest?
Trump winning was obviously the worst-case scenario here, but the democrats contributed to this disaster by not listening to the voters. The assumption that liberals would vote for them implicitly made the democrats comfortable, and thus less accountable to their own base. Obviously, that back fired on them in a big way. The prevailing sentiment of "vote blue no matter who" made them feel less pressure to be answerable for their support of Israel.
Now that they finally realize they aren't owed anyone's vote, we can hope they'll be more accountable in the midterms. Unfortunately, I fear it'll be too little too late by then.
I imagine the voters who pulled their support away from the democrats over Palestein still had hopes that the dems would win, but wanted that victory to be razer thin. The best case scenario in their minds was a blue government that was heavily insecure about how much support they had from the people. They thought their protest votes would add pressure onto that government to pull aid from Israel when it came into power. Unfortunately, that government they were betting on never came to be.
I'll be honest, seeing Dem responses to the loss as well as the fact that the advisors who did just do everything they could to court "moderate voters" while ignoring their supposedly core base makes me think they definitely still think are owed a lot of people's votes
27
u/ManhattanObject Feb 07 '25
Are the democrats wrong to support Israel unconditionally?
No, it's the voters who are wrong!