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MAGA Didn't Win....WE LOST! [1]

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Date: 2025-03-26

I have no doubt some people are going to go off on me for saying so but MAGA didn’t win as much as WE lost the Presidential election. What do I mean by that? Well I mean that we lost the election of 2024 for the same reason that we lost in 2016. We lost because if the erstwhile Republican party that has become MAGA is a body that brooks no criticism or dissent, the Democrats are the party that absolutely refuses to achieve anything close to any kind of cohesion.

Let me give you an example: We lost Michigan and we lost it in those areas that we won in 2020. Areas with large Arab-American concentrations. They believed the Biden administration to have betrayed them by continuing to supply the IDF with weapons and munitions. Even while acknowledging that Biden wasn’t free to do everything they were demanding. Even while freely admitting that Trump II would be orders of magnitude worse. Even though they saw Netanyahu openly manipulating their very own emotions, they STILL stayed home or turned out more heavily for Trump. They knew Biden wasn’t free, they knew that Trump would be worse. They knew that they, themselves were being manipulated by the very author of the violence in Gaza, Bibi the Butcher. Yet despite all of that, they couldn’t put their goddamned hurt feelings and moral outrage aside. In short, instead of voting with their cerebral cortices, they voted with their lizard brains in a big “fuck you” to the Democratic party for failing to sufficiently soothe their ruffled feathers.

I’m not making light of the Palestinian plight, nor am I by any stretch implying that Arab-Americans in Michigan are responsible for our loss! It’s just one of the clearest examples of the mindset I’m condemning. I have consistently voiced my own outrage at the foot dragging and reflexive support for internal Israeli violence toward its own citizens from the Democratic party when it comes to I/P. Nor do I wish to suggest that it was the only issue leading to division within our party, There was also the deeply rooted misogyny and yes, racism that refuses to relinquish its hold on some of us. There were also endless complaints about health care and foreign policy and energy policy and the social safety net and religion and LGBTQ rights, (both too pro and too con!) and on and on. Each of these issues I had heard mentioned as a “deal breaker” from one group or another. Many of these same people, some right here on Daily Kos, seem grimly satisfied that a second reign the Pumpkin King has come about because NOW the democrats will pay the price for failing to be in 100 percent lockstep with you. There are still Democrats insisting that trans Americans be jettisoned to mollify mythical crossover voters. They are being manipulated and lied to. They know they are being manipulated and lied to and yet, like under some unbreakable compulsion, they follow the MAGA design.

THAT’S NOT WHO WE ARE!!! Let me repeat that: AGREEING 100% IS NOT WHO WE ARE!!! That’s MAGA’s jam. NOT ours. This is why I have no hope for the future. Because I see an endless cycle of electing some depraved lunatic ruining lives, chipping away at rights, then being rejected out of the immediate backlash, then complacency and bickering returning, ushering in the next depraved lunatic. Because for some reason we can’t get past our petty squabbles, pet peeves and demands for ideological purity long enough to achieve a real victory. The only type of victory that will save us. A victory in which all vestiges of the MAGA cult are erased from political life. We lose because like toddlers, we hold our breath when we don’t get 100 percent of what we want. We lose because every faction that makes up the anti MAGA coalition has their own red lines and they can’t help but conflict in places. One group’s line in the sand is another group’s must have response. Everybody can’t be pleased simultaneously so inevitably compromises have to be made. It’s axiomatic that you’re not going to be able to please everybody in diametrically opposed positions. The problem lies in the seeming belief that “compromise” means “Do what I say and shut the fuck up about it”. This fractious self interest is our nature as Democrats, always has been. Ask Will Rogers, who famously once said:

I am not a member of any organized party. I’m a Democrat.

Inevitably some peoples’ issues have to take a back seat. Let me give you another example: When same sex marriage was the cutting edge issue, a lot of gay and lesbian Americans thought that trans men and women needed to shut up and go away. Famously Barney Frank outright said that trans people don’t belong in the larger LGB community and though he later backtracked, the damage was done and the trans community has continued to languish behind in civil rights as one of the only groups that can be ridiculed and made fun of without a strong public backlash. Popular television shows like The Big Bang Theory, for example traded heavily in trans “jokes”. A lot of my brothers and sisters are still understandably outraged by that derision from some of the strongest voices in the LGBTQ community and refused to work for marriage equality in retaliation.

The Republicans are masters of creating and/or exploiting these kinds of fractures in our coalition. Their whole strategy is to peel off coalition member groups like an onion. They aren’t after those votes, they just want them angry enough at other Democrats to keep them home. Peel off the trans Americans from the broader Democratic coalition — done. Peel off the immigration advocates from the coalition — done. Peel off the Muslim supporters of Palestinian rights — done. Peel off the progressive minded democratic socialists — done. Peel off the liberal hawks — done. It’s not about “messaging” it’s about manipulation and folks, you’re being played like a goddamn violin by the people we all love to claim we’re smarter than. You’re allowing yourself to be manipulated rather than taking a page from their book and pitting retired Americans, say against tech bros or Christian Moms against the philandering executives they’re married to.

I’ve been a Daily Kos registered member for 20 years now. Before that I spent a lot of time at the erstwhile Americablog, (from which I was banned for advocating for trans rights, btw). I was a contributor at Firedoglake during the time we were known here as “firebaggers” for being too far left and for bellicosely trying to push President Obama leftward. I ended up leaving FDL for the very same reasons I’m outlining in this post. That is because a group of ideological purists came along and got ugly with anyone and everyone that didn’t toe their very narrow line. The death spiral of FDL is a microcosm of what the party as a whole is facing right now and a source of my hopelessness. A core group with a plethora of special interests, all of whom refuse to compromise or even listen to others’ concerns and immediately shuts down differing opinions, often with unnecessary harshness. Nobody is willing to be in the back seat. Everyone wants to drive this clown car and as a result, we crash over and over.

I have not had a privileged or easy life. Some of that is my fault and some was beyond my control but one thread that has been consistent throughout is that as a transwoman, I have always been forced to occupy the back seat and scolded or ignored for trying to back seat drive every time I brought up my own wants and needs. It’s never been my turn but I have time and time again pointed out how this insistence on purity, this demand to be the driver, the sole arbiter of our agenda is the bane of our existence. We can’t, no group larger than 1, can all have their way on everything, all the time. Yet election after election is way closer than it should be given the current insanity from the right because the straights, (unaffiliated voters) see us as a bunch of incessantly bickering and squabbling Prima Donnas or “elitists”. We don’t debate, we whine, we get angry, we dig in, we draw lines in the sand. We become entrenched and refuse to budge and way too many of us decide to punish the party for not getting 100 percent of our way by not participating or even worse, pulling a Nina Turner and very publicly badmouthing our own. I have spent my two decades at Daily Kos urging my fellow Democrats to stop throwing temper tantrums when they don’t get their way all of the time to no avail.

Yes, of course there should be guardrails, general and very broad principles that we must adhere to, like civil rights, a living wage and affordable healthcare but we’ve become too specialized, too uncompromising on more specific issues. Biden can’t immediately turn off the spigot and deprive Israel of weapons? Fuck you, I’m staying home. Biden didn’t tax the rich at Eisenhower levels? Fuck you, I’m staying home. Democrats didn’t stop oil production in MY back yard? Fuck you, I’m staying home. The Affordable Care Act wasn’t Medicare for All? Yep. Staying home. PUMAs in 2008? Staying home. Bernie Bros in 2016? Staying home. It’s not just counter productive, it has got us to where we are today. I’m not saying that we should follow our leaders like the MAGA lemmings. I’m saying that we should speak out and advocate our positions and then unite behind a common goal, rather than continue to badmouth and agitate.

A lot of people have noticed that I’m not participating as much as I used to. It’s because, quite frankly, Democrats are fucking exhausting. I might as well scream at the tide than try to point out shit that Ray Charles would have been able to see. I’m tired of trying to argue that Bernie Bros and Clintonistas, for example, have more in common than most biological siblings, yet in 2016 they kept cycling higher and higher in rhetoric and threats as each group stratified and became set in concrete. I was fully in with Senator Sanders in the primaries, right up until he lost New York. Then I immediately became a Clinton supporter because unlike the group that infamously flounced off, stage left to create their own specialized bubble, I didn’t see the contradiction. Sure, Clinton wasn’t anywhere near as left leaning as I am and of course many of her positions differed from mine but she was well within those democratic guardrails I mentioned. And though she was in the right lane instead of left, I didn’t fucking hold my breath or take my toys and go straight home. When did we become the party of whiny ass babies who HAD to win our internal debates so urgently that we will willingly, gleefully harm the party and the nation when we don’t get our way?

If you, the whole non MAGA coalition ever want to win power again, if you ever want to save our country from honest to FSM tyranny, you need to grow TF up and adult when it comes to elections. Red lines are for guardrails, not the lanes in between them. Stop thinking that what you want is more important than what the country needs. In most cases those individual issues are very important, I’m not suggesting that your own favorite issue is petty or meaningless but again, reality is uncompromising and reality tells us that not everyone can win everything they want.

There was the famous cartoon from several years back that I’ve used to illustrate the danger of the uncompromising internal squabbling that I have come to loathe. It’s always met with “Yeah but … (insert some form of “me, me, me..”) and the world makes another revolution around the axis of stupid. I’m sorry your guy/issue/desire didn’t win or wasn’t included. Welcome to my world. My favorite issue, which is the right to live in peace and support myself, has never “won” or taken the front seat. Biden came the closest to recognizing trans people as real people, deserving of the same rights and privileges as anyone else. Hell 18 years ago I was outright told that my civil rights, my very right to basic human dignity was less important than the ability to marry your same sex partner. We still have people right here who come along almost daily to blame my existence for our loss in November. My right to exist, which honestly didn’t become an issue important to anyone else until it showed up on MAGA’s radar, has never once been prioritized or, until Biden, even acknowledged as important. Yet that hasn’t stopped me from voting for Democrats. Get that? My very right to BE has been ignored, sneered at and dismissed by so many in the Democratic Party that if anyone has a right to hold their breath until they turn blue, it’s me. But I don’t. Why? Because there are issues just as important to more people that just to me. Don’t surrender your values, FFS but learn to put them into context.

Still I have voted for Democrats. I’ve given money that I couldn’t afford, knocked on doors of strangers, many of whom were alarmingly hostile to my presence, I’ve advocated and I’ve marched. Through it all the heaviest stone to lift, the most unmovable object has been the big, stubborn, fuck off stump of Democratic “Me first” bullshit. Well I’m done with it. I’m exhausted and demoralized. Not by the hostile greetings I often got while door knocking or even the venomous bile I get from Cultists that touch my life. Nope, I’m done because of you. I’m done trying to point out the folly of relentless bickering and whining. You guys, every one of you are smart, passionate and dedicated to your personal causes, most of which I share but so many of you don’t fucking know how to take “no” or even “not yet” for an answer. You can’t compromise or even be pragmatic. You’re the spoiled kid who says if “I can’t have nice things then nobody can”. And it doesn’t matter how many times that sort of stubborn, intractable thinking forces a loss, you won’t. Fucking. Change.

I don’t know if you keep doing the same thing out of pettiness or because you honestly think that eventually you’ll get a different result by repeating it enough and frankly I don’t care. Ideologues have no use for reality when it conflicts with their beliefs. I should take my own advice and stop trying to reason with them. At one time I thought that I could persuade or impress upon enough of you the self destructive nature of selfishness to make a difference but after November 5th, I’ve come to realize that it’s like trying to push a southbound train north with a wet sponge. Between the self satisfied posts that can be categorized as FAFO and the endless and exhausting claims that if only Dems had (insert action/issue here) we would have won, I just can’t bring myself to spend a lot of time here anymore. Like FDL, Daily Kos has become a forum for infighting, only in burnt orange instead of azure. We’re not here to elect more and better Dems, we’re here to stake territory and pretend to be the most important faction in the Democratic coalition.

Elect more and better Dems…. Elect MORE and better Dems. Some of us have forgotten the “more” part and now all of us suffer because of unrealistic demands for purity and you wanna know what? The ones who suffer the most are usually not the ones creating the most conflict. I’m pragmatic because I’m vulnerable. Have you ever stopped to wonder why Black women vote Democratic in percentages that would make Kim Jong Un envious? It’s because they are a vulnerable group. They know that, despite almost never being put first in any policy or agenda, their interests lie so much closer to the Democratic positions that it is self destructive and foolhardy to vote Republican. Like me, they’re playing the long game. They know that needs are more important than wants and that while Republicans will never give them what they want or need, Democrats, while imperfect, are at least going in the same direction as they are.

This is not a GBCW. This is not a DELETE MY FUCKING ACCOUNT, KOS! This is me throwing in the towel at persuading some of you stop thinking that your wants are the center of the political universe. This is about an explanation for my change after November 5th and an expression of why some days it’s all I can do to not become suicidal. It’s about expressing why I’m feeling hopeless and helpless. I am going to stay around, though less and less often and I am going to continue to subscribe and give to Daily Kos because, for all it’s faults, I believe in alternative media and websites like this are at least going in that direction. (See how that works?) I, for one, believe it is already too late, that we squandered our last, best chance to save our nation. The only thing now standing between us and open authoritarianism is the tenuous, threadbare respect the administration still has for the Judicial Branch but even that is fading fast. So on the off chance that we do get one more bite at the apple, some of you guys better figure it the fuck out. It’s not all about you and your own favorite priorities.

I’m not leaving elected Democrats out of this equation either. You guys…. Where do I start? At what point did you decide that you could shit on your own base over and over and still win elections? Because your contemptuous attitude toward your own constituents has been a problem at least since my own political awakening. I’m also just completely over your sly grifting and winking at your wealthy patrons while dismissing the very real anger that your actions and especially inactions engender in the people that fucking hired you to represent us. US! Not your rich goddamned friends who can afford to buy access. If you just want to represent the needs of the highest bidder, get out of public service and become a lobbyist. And speaking of lobbyists, that particular revolving door needs to stop and be locked forever.

Here’s the thing and I’m going to tell you: the anger is real and whether you think it’s justified or not couldn’t be less relevant. You had better give the base and any remaining unaffiliated voters something to vote for other than just being “not MAGA” and you’d better figure that the fuck out before 2026 rolls around. And though your own concerns are different than rank and file Democratic voters, your penchant for believing that you’re the only important person in the room, that you’re the only qualified driver of the car, is identical. You constantly inflict your own wounds. Take the budget “fight” for example. Schumer did what had to be done and I accept that. I don’t like it but I agree that reality is real. My objection lies in the fact that he was bellicosely saying “NEVER!” in all caps when it came to the House budget, only to meekly vote to advance it in the Senate as soon as it dropped. While I can agree that it was the “best” option available, he gave the appearance of folding like a goddamn beach towel. NOT exactly confidence inspiring. Don’t bluff if you can’t afford to be called on it. Poker 101. You’re being played too. You think you’re too smart for that but that makes you all the easier to manipulate.

We were told over and over for four years that you guys were creating a firewall in case Trump somehow found himself back in office, a bulwark against Fascism but when the worst happened, all of your rhetoric, all of your claims of having preserved Democracy was so much tissue paper in the rain. Like your voters, if you can’t get past your stupid fucking assumptions and beliefs and join those of us who have to live without the luxury of self delusion, then it’s already over. Might as well buy a red hat and practice the Trump wave. Again, it’s just fucking exhausting and frustrating to me to repeatedly point out that what we need is a bit of stark reality and to stop living in our bubble of how we think things should be. Thoughts of Utopia are great but it won’t bring water to the Atacama Desert. Wake the fuck up because if you’re waiting for a mass epiphany among MAGA worshipers, we are good and doomed.

THEY can’t save us! YOU can’t save us! Only WE can save us. I’m done being nice and I’m done being polite and I’m sure as hell am done with being lied to. Respect for each other is vastly more important than self respect. We should have been strengthening guardrails, not road raging over who gets to go first in which lane. I don’t believe enough of you, enough of US are willing and able to put a lid on our own egos long enough to work for the common good because like it or not, appearances win elections and when people have a choice between constant turmoil and chaos and many voices, confidently speaking as one, it matters less what the message is and more about its confidence and coherence. I don’t make the rules but goddamn it, I can’t change them and neither can you. My own state is trying to make it a felony for people to be trans like me but even I can understand that possibility is insignificant compared to the horrors that are to come for so many more of us unless all of you can also figure it the fuck out. Stop casting about for villains and scapegoats. Stop the endless and nauseating biased opinionating disguised as analysis. This is not a fucking game! WE lost. Fucking own it. Learn from it. The last election was ours to lose and we succeeded in doing that spectacularly.

I’m just as guilty. I’ve gotten dragged into quarrels and arguments about this and that. Sometimes I’ve jumped in willingly. I’m a passionate person and there’s nothing wrong with that but like anything else, it can go too far. Lately I’ve caught myself denouncing those who I have called the “Vichy Dems” when I felt were too quick to surrender but the time for that kind of rhetoric is in primaries and not general elections. When you find yourself seriously thinking of staying home on election day or throwing your support to the enemy, when all you want to do is go nihilist because something didn’t break your way, you’ve taken it too far. And that’s all I’m asking; when you find yourself wanting to take a torch to everything because you didn’t get your way, catch yourself and remind yourself that pressure on Netanyahu, while inadequate, is so much better than collaborating with him to open a new PGA course in Rafah. We need to learn how to advocate strongly for our positions and then unite behind the common good. We’ve got that first part down, now let’s practice some compromise. Some willingness to let our own desires become subsumed by the greater good. If you are anything but a wealthy, white, heterosexual, Christian, cis-gender male, voting for Republicans is fucking stupid and I don’t care that you’re pissed because reality prevents your demands being immediately fulfilled. Business as usual won’t do it anymore and both elected and rank and file Democrats better understand that or get used to being Newt Gingrich’s “permanent loyal opposition”. I’ve finally reached the conclusion that I can’t selfishly burn the motherfucker down in a fit of pique, justifiable or otherwise. Because in the end, John Fetterman is still orders of magnitude better than Ted Cruz and Biden’s weak tea response to Netanyahu was orders of magnitude better than plans to eradicate the population and turn it into Trump’s Gaza Resort and Spa.

I’ll leave you these words. I tried to share them with my mom 50 years ago, though she eventually died sad and depressed, still muttering her refrain, “I wish I were rich”. Maybe you’ll pay more heed but as I said, I have no reason to hope that you, elected or otherwise, will. You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might find you get what you need. Keep fucking around being obsessed with what you want and you’ll lose it all. For all of US.

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