As frustrating as it was to watch it from a distance, it was orders of magnitude more frustrating to watch members of our own community, u/jordanlund , and u/FlyingSquid, convert several high-profile subs into echo-chambers effectively devoid of dissenting opinions with regards to how the Democrats were performing, how successful they were being, and what it would take to win the election.

Its one thing when its happening at a distance, but these individuals did real damage, here, in our community. And it wasn’t unique to lemmy. It happened on almost all social media platforms and in mainstream and alternative media as well. I’ve got standing ban’s in c/world and c/political_memes from expressing the exact points I’m making here, when these things were happening. The campaign was largely shielded from the dissenting opinion that what they were doing wasn’t working, and it cost them the election. Even as late as October they could have pivoted/ re-calibrated, but they didn’t think they needed to because they weren’t hearing the opinion that shit wasn’t working. I think its just more painful when its your own community doing the scum-bag thing.

Democrats won’t win an election by ignoring and silencing legitimate criticism. They’ll need to deal with and elevate criticisms and discuss how they’ll be doing things differently. The constant and pernicious gaslighting, its why they lose elections. Or maybe the right phrasing is that they couldn’t win? The relevancy isn’t clear to be because I’m unsure we’ll have elections again.

There was so much on the line and they cost us everything.