During the campaign I thought the celebrity appearances were a really bad move… making the Democrats look completely out of touch when average Americans have rising living costs.

I think a lot of people don’t see it that way. E.g. there are many working class people across America who support Trump.

Maybe they could vote for the Democrats if the Democrats can earn more blue-collar credentials, and if they can paint the Republicans as the party of the rich. Perhaps the GOP is the party of the rich, but they now also have supporters who aren’t rich at all.

Surely it’s true that in order for a party to win an election it has to persuade centrist voters, undecided voters, registered independents, etc. An average person who isn’t too invested in politics.

So you decided to hate me and the entire country I’m from based on the actions of a single person?

All western countries have right-wing elements and many of those elements in different countries have rioted or protested. In any case I still think it’s true that a party has to appeal to enough centrists (e.g. independent voters) to win an election.

About the same number of people voted for Trump in the last two elections (about 74 million people) while the Democrat vote went down from 81 million to 69 million. So maybe some people around the political centre (independent voters, etc) felt Harris wasn’t compelling enough.

I dunno really I’m just guessing. The Democrats will probably have a lot of data and exit polls telling them which demographics they need to do better with.

Fair enough. I mean I would definitely say it’s true that Starmer has moved rightwards since he was elected as Labour leader, but I guess I would consider him now being somewhere in the centre. People on the right would say he’s far-left I bet. “Two-tier Keir” and all that.

Maybe in some countries they wouldn’t refer to Labour as centre-left, but I think the majority of Brits would agree with Labour being called centre-left.

Starmer would probably like to introduce more left-wing policies, like when he said a couple of years ago that he wanted to abolish university tuition fees, but Corbyn’s election losses seemed to lead Starmer to believe that he needed to be more centrist in order to successfully replace the Tories.

Anyway I think most people in Britain and around the world would refer to Labour as a centre-left party even if they disagree with Labour’s policies.

The reason I think Labour are centre-left is because I think most people would think of them that way. I’m not trying to defend them or anything like that, I didn’t even vote this year. I just think that’s how most people would refer to them.

Maybe left and right are relative terms and Labour are centre-left within the context of British politics… but maybe this is the wrong community for me to say things like that.

I think in any country you have to appeal to undecided voters in the centre in order to win an election. So yes maybe the Dems shouldn’t appeal to “the right” but they probably need to appeal to the centre.

I think centrism can win elections though. In my country, the UK, elections are usually won by whichever party captures the centre ground. Keir Starmer won in the UK this year by being centrist. Previously David Cameron and Tony Blair were pretty centrist, and both won multiple elections.

If that’s true then both Ukrainians and Russians have impositions on their freedom, but at least Ukraine seems to have had democratic elections over the last 10 years, whereas Russia has been rigging their elections, perhaps since 1999 (or longer than that).

Anyway, I would definitely like for Ukrainians to be allowed to leave their country if they wish. But the blame for this invasion surely rests on Russia. The Kremlin launched this imperialistic invasion in 2022, building upon their earlier invasions in 2014.

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Are people in Russian-occupied territories free to protest against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? No. They would get put in prison, or worse. So they aren’t free.

I do think Ukrainians should be allowed to leave Ukraine. But you seem to be blaming Zelenskyy for the Russian shells, being fired by Russian forces. For some reason you don’t want to put any blame at all on the Kremlin - why is that?

liberated

Russia is imperialist and I don’t trust any of their “referendums” in the occupied regions of Ukraine, given that Russia rigs elections (that’s a video of ballot stuffing in Russia).

could you please also explain to me how being unable to leave your country where you can be kidnapped on a street at any day and sent to die is not considered slavery

I do think there is a point to make here. Ukrainians should be free to leave their country if they want. But anyway, I strongly disagree with your view that Russia’s imperialist invasion of Ukraine is “liberating” anything or anyone.