I had a co worker today say trump was the lesser evil between him and Kamala. Then proceeded to say he was better than Biden, Obama, and Bush. I’ve lost all respect for him.
Another one said there’s no reason to worry about politics because you can’t fix them. They also vote republican, 100% only because they supported the second amendment.
There’s nothing you can say to change their mind. We’re just fucked as a country because our average IQ seems to be in the single digits.
Having body cameras is great, but only if there’s consequences for acting illegally. ICE knows they won’t face any repercussions while fascists are running the government.
“more cameras”, “more training”…
are just codewords for “more budget”, a white supremacists masked gang, led by probably history’s worse pedophile. and the “opposition” is asking to raise their budget.
This is the difference between Chaotic Evil and Lawful Evil.
I don’t think this is gonna sound “civil”, because I genuinely think we are so completely fucked in the US that if we want to avoid either a Somalia-style civil war (which is really bad BTW) or a dictator in power … we need to do some pretty drastic stuff. And … even this is kinda dangerous IMO, but also IMO “safe” was something that went byebye in the 2024 election.
We must primary worthless Democrats like Schumer anywhere we can. “Ohhhhhkaayyyy…” FUCKING NO DAMMIT, NO MORE! This surrender bullshit has to stop and that means he’s gotta be removed from “leader” at the least. Then we need to get every Democrat we can into office, with strong leadership in the Senate and Stronger in the House. We must flip the Senate.
Next, Vance needs to be impeached. Yes Vance. Congress doesn’t actually need “cause” but claiming an army of fucking stormtroopers have “absolute immunity” to murder Americans is cause enough. He’s gotta go. And Congress must refuse to appoint his replacement. Because when you then impeach Trump over … pick a crime, really? That makes the Speaker our president. You see why I said this is dangerous, because one party rule always is corrupt. If we come out of this with a democracy where elections matter it’ll be a miracle.
The new president can begin firing Trump’s cabal of feckless, corrupt incompetents, and sith lord Stephen Miller too. At that point we need a special counsel to start investigatin’ and referring people for prosecutions as the evidence is collected. And the prosecutions need to happen. I don’t think people accept less than that. The evidence has to come out, and people need to be accountable. That is gonna include some in Congress. (Although frankly every Republican in Congress had access to classified info that proved a lot of Trump’s crimes from the start, so IMO they’re all co-conspirators. But I doubt even firebrand Democrats have the guts to charge them all.)
This is a monumental task and I have no idea how it gets accomplished.
We’ve already seen great progress on a local/community front with new progressive, even socialist mayors and representatives being elected to major positions of power, flying in the face of the narrative that all elections are rigged.
The USA is huge and made of 50 individual states each with their own varied systems of rules and political allegiances, and the GOP and this dumb administration broadly have been way overreached thinking they can strangle the entire thing into submission.
We can absolutely get this thing turned around if we keep this effort towards our local representation and leadership. We can work on deposing every incumbent Democrat and actually getting in people who want to go against the mainstream status-quo and finally squash this old-money, monoparty kayfabe.
Your biggest enemy in this is going to be other self-described leftists who think that it doesn’t matter, that politics cannot change anything and expect immediate reward in the form of some kind of “armed revolution” and anything less than that is too boring and slow for their attention spans.
Otherwise, the USA is a huge, slow-turning boat, the things that happen now have an effect months or years downstream, so it’s very hard to predict overall public feelings as more and more of Trump’s admin wrecks shit and creates problems for people. We can easily capitalize on this.
https://www.progressivevictory.win/ is an organization who helps link people up with progressive candidates in their area to help support or volunteer to help. They helped get people like Zohran Mamdani and Katie Wilson elected recently among others.
(Save your angry pushback Lemmy browsers, I block doomers, tankies and edgy teenagers with glee, get off your ass and do something useful.)
Your biggest enemy in this is going to be other self-described leftists who think that it doesn’t matter, that politics cannot change anything and expect immediate reward in the form of some kind of “armed revolution” and anything less than that is too boring and slow for their attention spans.
I’m a secret third thing: a self-described leftist (is there another kind? do I apply somewhere?) who thinks electoral politics will never save us, and armed revolution doesn’t have the critical mass to save us any time soon.
I think America is the only thing that can kill America, and that that outcome is inevitable, and the duty of any person of conscience is to organize and bond their community together so the fewest possible number of people die during that collapse. This means different things for everyone, but it should include growing food if you’re fortunate enough to be in a position to do so, then freely giving it away to neighbors.
That’s not doomerism. I think the world that comes after will be better, but the turbulence leading there will be horrific.
With that said, I do admire your revolutionary optimism and I’d prefer you be correct than me. Feel free to block me anyway though, I don’t really mind that either.
electoral politics will never save us,
electoral politics isn’t going to save us, but we can use it. shit, why don’t a few of us run?
I actively promote community, I have said over and over here that community IS the thing that will save us, I don’t even care what you define yourself as, if you’re promoting forming community for any reason, you’re helping the country. I would only add that the community organization shouldn’t ignore active political engagement, specifically towards local representation in whatever shape that takes.
The people I take issue with are the leftists who don’t want to plant trees they won’t sit in the shade of, and reject all forms of helpful engagement unless it makes them feel a civil war is about to start for their personal amusement. As much as I take issue with right-wing preppers praying for a race war and thinking that their box garden of tomatoes and 80,937,383,800 rounds of ammo are going to save them if society collapses the way they want it to.
The dissolution of active community-building is what sank progressivism in the US, the right kept power because they still unite and connect through gun culture and mindless stupidity and waving the flag, while the left retreated to the far reaches of the internet sulking in their atomized spaces that the other leftist group wasn’t inclusive enough or had a “bad tone.”
If we can restore communities, of almost any kind, from small groups of outdoors gardeners to apartment blocks looking out for their neighbors, AND use that momentum to actually elect real representation, we can repeat what’s been repeated over and over again recently in progressive politics.
I know it might not work, I’m not delusional, we may be in for a long, slow decline into becoming the world’s next big 3rd World Country, but I don’t think we’re past the point of no return yet. I think a lot of people who think “it’s so over” are really underestimating how big and complex the states are.
The people I take issue with are the leftists who don’t want to plant trees they won’t sit in the shade of, and reject all forms of helpful engagement unless it makes them feel a civil war is about to start for their personal amusement
Yeah, I learned what that’s called recently lol. Putschism. I have a good friend who thinks that way. I think they’re just frustrated and desperate, which I can totally understand, but I agree it’s not the way forward. I think they also tend to be white (and I mean, same lol), and I saw a quote that said, “White men are the most socialized to glorify violence and the least likely to be impacted by the consequences of it.” I think that reality lends itself to putchism too. The intentions fundamentally are good, I absolutely disagree with you framing it as being “for their own personal amusement”, but the thought pattern is not particularly realistic imo.
The dissolution of active community-building is what sank progressivism in the US, the right kept power because they still unite and connect through gun culture and mindless stupidity and waving the flag, while the left retreated to the far reaches of the internet sulking in their atomized spaces that the other leftist group wasn’t inclusive enough or had a “bad tone.”
Absolutely, completely agreed. I saw it said that a lot of these leftists come from evangelical backgrounds, and just replaced the term “sinful” in their vernacular with “problematic”. Though of course I think some discourse and strife is healthy, we have to ‘keep our eyes on the prize’ so to speak.
If we can restore communities, of almost any kind, from small groups of outdoors gardeners to apartment blocks looking out for their neighbors, AND use that momentum to actually elect real representation, we can repeat what’s been repeated over and over again recently in progressive politics.
Also totally agree with this. I went to WalMart once recently - it was literally the only place that sold the item I needed except Amazon - and I had to ask where to find an item. I approached the worker and said, “If I’m not interrupting you too much, could you show me where to find (item)?” He was actually taken aback by this incredibly basic level of humanity. He said something like, “Oh I don’t mind being interrupted”, and as we were walking over to the section with the items, he told me that people just didn’t treat him like a human anymore. He said “it’s like, like slave labor” and that he remembers the 70’s, when things weren’t as bad. I’m like 99% sure he was a Filipino immigrant, so I would’ve thought the 70’s would be more racist and all that, but I got the impression that whatever shit he had to deal with back then was less hurtful than the way people treat him now.
I posted that story on Pixelfed, and someone asked, “Okay, well what do we do about it?” And my answer was, “Start growing food.” Unless you have a lot of money, or maybe a connection to get him into a better job, then you can’t help that man today. You have to help the children who will grow up into that man, or someone in even worse circumstances. (Though I’d like to go back and at least talk to him again some day, it’s a big WalMart and it might be unlikely I’d see him again.)
That was a longer tangent than I intended, but my point mostly being, we are each others’ only way through this, whatever “this” turns out to be. That approach is the only reason we survived humanity’s near-extinction during an ice age (I think it was a mini-ice age rather than “THE” ice age).
I would build community with you and we would learn from each others differences. That’s the kind of world I want and think we can still have.
That approach is the only reason we survived humanity’s near-extinction during an ice age (I think it was a mini-ice age rather than “THE” ice age).
I use a similar line a lot trying to explain to people why we’re hardwired to reach out to each other and build communities, and why it’s being stifled by modern culture of algorithm-fed isolation and part of why everyone is so, so miserable.
I am worried about a lot of things we’re not looking at that are going to bite us soon though. The lack of relationships, falling rates of sex, the falling birthrates are massively worrying, not because I think we need to “retvrn to tradition” or anything with white families cranking out white babies like so many on the right have co-opted the issue about, but rather… we’re not loving each other anymore. We are all scared of each to the degree that we’re even resisting our desires to connect and have emotions and intimacy, and that’s a huge red flag for our society that isn’t getting enough attention.
A protestor in Minnesota said it and I repeat it: Democrats won’t save you. Republicans won’t save you. Nobody is coming. Only your neighbor can save you.
I just add the fact that we’re all neighbors, and I want people to learn to be social and confident in themselves and their values again, but it’s getting very hard with these exploitative tools in the digital age feeding people’s worst insecurities.
Well thank you stranger-friend, that’s a kind thing to say, and I feel the same way.
we’re not loving each other anymore. We are all scared of each to the degree that we’re even resisting our desires to connect and have emotions and intimacy, and that’s a huge red flag for our society that isn’t getting enough attention.
I agree, and I think the issue is very complex, but could be significantly reduced by just teaching boys what healthy masculinity is. Buut as with all things, capitalism gets in the way - who will teach these boys anything if their parents (and other relatives) are working all the time? Who will be their role models when the worst, most misogynistic behavior is so often rewarded and glorified?
I focus on masculinity specifically because, while it’s largely true that everyone is afraid of each other, the fears of feminine people are generally more founded in the actual danger presented by men, while the fears of men are often artificial. (Not always though, like the whole parental custody controversy, but often.) Reduce those artificial fears, and hopefully men would behave in less of a manner which culminates in actual danger, ie no incel rage if you realize you really don’t need to be an incel if you’re just… a decent person.
Birth rates, I am not sure what to think, in all honesty. Aging populations are bad for the obvious reason of, there won’t be enough young people to take care of all the elderly, at least not to the extent which they deserve. But the resulting lower global resource use isn’t a terrible thing, maybe even a vital thing as we transition to more sustainable systems capable of supporting more life. Maybe it’s just humanity returning to levels of population which the earth is actually capable of sustaining, which we deviated from only as a result of the aberration that is the industrial revolution? I genuinely don’t know though, I’m not saying I believe that, I’m just thinking out loud here.
Bringing people back to love and connectivity is one reason why I’m a major advocate for psychedelic drugs. They dissolve social norms and make you question your conditioning - at least, I would say, if you’re listening to them. They still need to be reinforced by a strong, loving, human culture; they’re not a silver bullet. They had LSD, MDMA, and psilocybin available for purchase on Epstein’s island ffs, and Peter Thiel and Elon Musk have both tripped. So psychedelics alone aren’t THE ANSWER, but I do think they can be a major aid in the fight to return humanity to western cultures.
But microdosing doesn’t count lolAbout birth rates, I just know my perspective, logistics is my thing, so I have a finger on the pulse of what makes the world function the way it is.
We could absolutely do with less resource consumption, but we didn’t get to this level overnight, so if we fell suddenly back to pre-industrial population levels any faster than rates are going now, it will be catastrophic, and then we have all the same issues over again. When there aren’t enough young people to man the services and production sectors, people go to the grocery store and don’t have eggs and bread suddenly, or they become prohibitively expensive, and then we have worried populations doing the same thing they did when the 2024 elections rolled around and the price of eggs was $15 bucks for a dozen, and people clenched up and voted for the loud mouth promising “radical change” over the status quo.
We will likely have a preview of how bad it can get with South Korea, they’ve passed a point of no return and to recover population levels to a functional level they would have to have every capable woman in the country have something like five kids, and all those kids would have to have five kids. And they’re currently overrun with the same social strain we have here between genders, again mostly manufactured by toxic media influencers as you touched on.
I have some hope for the US as we seem to be broadly finally rejecting some of the male insecurity grifters finally, and the up-and-coming generation seems to be more critical of these entities and their followings.
But that’s just one of many issues that seem to be intersecting in the medium-term future that we will have to navigate. Climate change, migrations, water access, economic strain on supply chains, surveillance states and the coming age of techno-feudalism that it doesn’t look like we’re going to avoid.
None of your plan is realistic because no one in a position of power to do anything agrees with you.
If you’re an American voter, you are. That’s the thing about sea changes in politics. They come from people who have very little power. And we do have very little power. It happens when there’s a damned lot of us, and not until then. The last time was when they kicked out the railroad barons and created anti-monopoly laws that are still on the books, mostly unused since the 70s. The time before that was pre-civil war. And before that was the revolutionary war itself.
These things don’t always have to be done via war, but they do have to be done by an overwhelming majority of people. Fatalism doesn’t help. Organizing does.
If you’re agreeing with ameancow’s suggestion that the solution is to primary non-progressive democrats, that’s not how we seize our power as the working class imo. The Democrats rigged their primaries against Bernie Sanders then had a court declare they were legally within their right to do so.
“[The DNC] could have voluntarily decided that, Look, we’re gonna go into back rooms like they used to and smoke cigars and pick the candidate that way. That’s not the way it was done. But they could have. And that would have also been their right…” - DNC attorney Bruce Spiva
You are trying to play democracy with a fundamentally undemocratic institution, according to their own legal claims. And even if you win, they’re excellent at corrupting people - just look at AOC Pelosi voting to fund the Zionazi entity.
On the other hand, you’re totally right that we have the real power in this country as the working class. Electoral politics - especially on the federal level - just aren’t how we’re going to effectively exercise that power. I vote anyway, it’s not a difficult thing to do, so why not? But I’m not under the illusion that it will save us. We have to hit them in the only place they care about: their wallets, bank accounts, stock portfolios, and GDP.
Because there are no leftist dems. All are either centre or center right.
And there are no center republicans, all are either far
leftright or extreme farleftright.Their goals are the same, just slightly different methods.
You must mean “right and far right”
Yes. Thanks
I mix up up left and right all the time irl, so this is an understandable mixup
What being terminally online does to a mother fucker.
“Terminally online” is a weird way of spelling “aware of global politics”, but sure yeah
Centrist dems? The Democrats are right wing. The Republicans are far right. There is no left or centre in US politics. If any is centrist, they are considered communist. What Americans consider to be left is still considered right by the rest of the world. The only centrist American politician I know of is Mamdani and the only slightly-left one I know of is Bernie Sanders. But the Democratic party is definitely on the right side of the spectrum.
the only slightly-left one I know of is Bernie Sanders.
He’s a liberal Zionist though. Always wanting to blame “”“the Netanyahu government”“” instead of the entire disgusting colonial project.
I majorly regret donating a single dollar to him.
I feel so fucking lucky that for all its faults, Finland has at least a somewhat working electoral system (D’Hondt, so it’s got problems but at least it’s better than FPTP) and I can vote for an actual socialist party (or communists in regional elections) and that vote will actually mean something.
Unfortunately the majority of Finns are either outright fascists or at best lukewarm liberals, soooo…
But at least we’ve had socialists as ministers, which is better than the shitshow the US has. Socialists aren’t left enough in my view, but I’d rather vote for them than not vote at all.
By only electing for DSA candidates, the party can be pulled leftward.
Unfortunately, I believe the only way we will ever get another fair, uncompromised election is by making extensive use of louisettes.
No justice, no budget. ICE shouldn’t get another bloody dollar until every officer that has violated any law or constitutional provision is in jail. Democrats voting to fund ICE need to be named and shamed as trump boot lickers. Pressure should be made toward the DNC and state parties to expel them.
ICE shouldn’t get another bloody dollar
Ever.
They are fundamentally a fascist institution. They cannot be reformed. The only people they hire are the sort of people who apply to join ICE, and there is no good reason to do that.
“The Gestapo should not be allowed to reform until the Nuremberg Trials conclude” is a bit of a wild position I’d say. Or if you prefer, “We shouldn’t allow slave-catchers in the north until they prove they can hunt slaves responsibly and civilly.”
Abolish it forever and put anyone who would bring it back in their place. No “funding after X condition is met.” No funding PERIOD, ever.
They need a visit from the Board of Education.
The Board of Education:
You want to brutalize Democrats with rusty spikes?
Democrats are just paid opposition. There’s a few good ones but the majority are bad
the only good ones are zohran, bernie, and aoc, and maybe some local ones. DNC only tolerates the latter 2, because they need reverse lightning rod.
AOC voted to fund the Zionazi entity. If that’s your metric of “good” then you need to demand more.
Bernie is a liberal Zionist who grew up in Israel and refused to call it a genocide until the UN did. And I say that as someone who donated plenty to him in 2016.
Zohran seems pretty cool so far, though denouncing the Palestinian resistance was weak as hell.
I generally consider these people who reject AIPAC money good. Unfortunately, they are far outnumbered
Ro kahna, illian Omar, pramala jayapal, Adelita GRIJalva, LATEEFAH SIMON, Maxine Waters, MAXWELL FROST, DELIA RAMIREZ, JESÚS CHUY GARCÍA, ANDRÉ CARSON, THOMAS MASSIE, CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, ELIZABETH WARREN, AYANNA PRESSLEY, RASHIDA TLAIB, BONNIE WATSON COLEMAN, NYDIA VELAZQUEZ, JEFF MERKLEY, SUMMER LEE, AL GREEN, GREG CASAR, PETER WELCH, BECCA BALINT, MARK POCAN
Every Republican is so so so so so much worse, though, so let’s all go door to door to sing praises for the DNC. If the DNC had more than 48 seats for the first time in over 13 years they wouldn’t have any excuses left. Let’s do that.
If the DNC had more than 48 seats for the first time in over 13 years they wouldn’t have any excuses left.
You mean like when they had a supermajority under Obama and did nothing to codify abortion protections, resulting in Trump being able to largely repeal them?
If the DNC had more than 48 seats
Their caucus had 50.
The ones who voted with republicans were DEMOCRATS, not the independents who caucus with the party.
Now stop lying for the enablers of fascism just because you love the results.
Oh WOOoooOoWiEee mr
They had a split 50:50 majority with caucusing and no progress occured? Thats lunacy! Dems are the devil, paid opposition, clearly! /sarcasm
Reminder that the most ind senators we’ve had in over a hundred years was 4 right before GOP swept 2024.
Reminder that half the IND voted to end the long government shutdown last year.
Reminder that an IND stopped the DNC from passing real healthcare reform in 2010, the only time the DNC with caucus had supermajority since 1979.
Reminder that an IND stopped the DNC from passing real healthcare reform in 2010
And suddenly we’re not talking about the past 13 years now that it’s convenient for you. Fine. The independent that made sure people went bankrupt and die for you was democrat enough to be Al Gore’s running mate in 2000. He counted then but since we needed a villain to rotate in to make sure sick people die like you and all centrists demand, he’s conveniently an independent. He also had the help of Ben Nelson, a Democrat. Congratulations on all the unnecessary death. Your portion of the caucus is justifiably proud of all the blood on your hands.
So for an encore, centrists supported genocide. You’re just republicans who want people to pretend you’re not.
To even compare the written legislations and vote records of the two parties is lunacy.
So what do we do when they don’t have any excuses left? Because they’re sure as shit not going to fix anything whether they’re able to or not. This is a Capitalist country - people work for money and nothing else, and most of Democrat’s money comes from donations from tech and finance giants who love the free reign they’re being given right now. As soon as the Democrats accepted that money it literally became their job to keep things the same for the benefit of their benefactors. On paper they’re against the far right, but money supersedes all of that.
I’m assuming exactly what you want to happen will happen: people will abandon the DNC. It’s perfect, isn’t it? Either things drastically improve like they promise or the glorious revolution begins. There is no lose condition if we just elect DNC.
You do? I certainly don’t. I think people will vote Democrat even as the gap between them and the Republicans closes more and more, to the point where they only know which is which by the color of their logo. That’s the issue with voting not for a person, and not for a set of ideals, but for the simple concept of “anything but the worst possible outcome,” especially in a world where the worst possible outcome keeps getting worse and worse.
I picture a world 30 years from now where we’re celebrating a win for a Democrat candidate who’s exactly like Donald Trump, because his Republican opponent is somehow even worse, all while the corporations that fund both parties celebrate 300% yearly growth. We need to vote blue, not because Democrats will do anything, but because things at least won’t get worse as we continue to organize the revolution. To wait and see what they do is to waste time that would be better served organizing.
We shouldn’t be singing the praises of Democrats, because they are just as integral of a part of the system as their opponents, and it will all need to be torn down before things can be rebuilt. The biggest hurdle is going to be getting people like you to let go of your everlasting hope that somehow there’s still a slight chance that all Democrats will suddenly become different people and decide not to do the very thing they got into politics to do - to get their very own bag of blood money.
Lmfao
So what do we do when they don’t have any excuses left?
just keep electing dems, because the party can only be failed never fail 😭
they are center right, not even center specifically. schumer and 13 other senators, + hakeem are all closer the og gop.
It’s my theory that they want to give ice cameras so they can more easily record the protesters’ faces without having to take out their phones since they are making some sort of database.
The company that makes the cameras (Axon, they also make tasers) has a whole web service for sharing the cam videos. So it’s already going to computers that can run facial recognition. I mean, that exists now. Of course more data means more protesters profiled.
Strap some IR LED lights and a small battery and toggle to your glasses.
Decent chance your face is now is big white blob to many cameras.
There are also glasses that protect against facial recognition, but they’re pretty fuckin expensive. At least, the ones which actually work are expensive.
they have hats too
Axon tried to recruit me to make payload drones that definitely won’t be used to drop grenades and “definitely” won’t be sold to US police and paramilitary to drop chemical weapons on civilians because it is “against their company values” (the company that tazes each other as an initiation rite).
I was debating on doing it to try to make everything work as badly as possible and learn how to make civilian countermeasures, but I ended up telling them to go fuck themselves and that they were liars, in no uncertain terms.
likely it will be linking to palintir as well, since we know the new speedcameras, red light are doing the same.
and the dems dont want being called out for allowing htem to use phones.
Get ready for a lot of left-splitting posts like this as the midterms get nearer.
How does it feel to have learned absolutely nothing for over a decade?
Because big tent politics and capitulating to centrist/right-wing Democrats has worked out so well for us.
In a two party system, a small tent is no tent. We can move the Democrats left. It’s happening now, in a big way, on the Israel issue.
We can move the Democrats left.
Not while continuing to capitulate to the right.
We can move the Democrats left.
Are you seriously bringing back this bullshit slogan from half a decade ago? I swear to god, BlueMAGA dems have literally convinced themselves that it’s 2020 and the Biden administration didn’t happen. What else can you do, I suppose? It categorically demonstrated that the “we can move them left!” Was bullshit.
It’s happening now
Oh, it’s happening now is it? Not during the year and a half of open genocide that the Democratic party oversaw? Just now, when they’re out of power? And in a “big way” huh? And yet not a single person within the party who participated in Isreals genocide has faced any consequence. Not even a slap on the wrist, let alone the trial and execution these monsters deserve.
This a farce at this point. Charlie Brown could tell you to stop trying to kick that football.
Do you even pay attention to the podcasts you brainwash yourself with? Chapo Trap House has said multiple times recently that Democrats are finally getting the message that their base has shifted massively against Israel.
deleted by creator
Republicans and those who think pod saves America should be listen too?
Yeah they are getting the fact that their base has shifted so they are just trying harder to get more right wing voters and be the “other” choice.
Just cause they see it doesnt mean they care to change in the way you want. This is the Epstein class after all.
You know how you move them left? By picking horrific policies like this, criticizing them heavily, and then getting rid of the politicians who support them. That’s how you move left. It’s not a magical thing you do. It’s this right here.
That’s fine for the primaries
You say, already complaining about people criticising the democrats before the primaries have even started.
You’re not going to believe this, but guess what’s happening right now?
Though I’m going to push back on that a little bit actually. It’s important you keep doing it the rest of the time too. Pressure has to be constant if you want to move a party. You don’t do it by sitting on your ass for all but two months of the year. The only way you can consistently steer a political party is by consistent pressure. So we need to never stop. Cuz guess who doesn’t stop, guess who doesn’t follow your advice, the neoliberals and their billionaire backers.
To the Democratic party, big tent politics means right-wing politics, and if you don’t know that by now, I’m not sure what to tell you.
Yeah we probably disagree on what right wing means. I hope you’re not throwing your vote away every year, because that is not helpful and we need help right now!
Stop supporting genocide
Best I can do is offer you a choice between a candidate who’s a devout Zionist, but a Democrat, and a candidate who’s actually anti-semitic, but is being blackmailed by Israel, so their policies are even more Zionist.
Vote blue no matter who?
I’m old enough to have seen that tried many times now, and look where we’re at.
I think it’s time for something different, and we can start by not championing centrists, or attacking/shaming people on the left who do criticize them.
similarly, when it comes down to general elections i hope we can recognize value of harm reduction versus purity contests
We clearly live in different timelines, the DNC have had 48 or less senators for over 13 years. If you want party reform you need to get initiatives on local ballots, if you want a progressive and democratic future then you need to vote DNC in the generals.
he DNC have had 48 or less senators for over 13 years
Complicit liar. They had 50 in their caucus and the turncoats were all democrats. The turncoats did what you wanted, so you’re lying for them.
Have you not noticed them failing to get support over the last 13+ years by trying the same strategy over and over again?
Why should we keep doing more of the same if it hasn’t worked? I don’t get this logic?
If you want party reform you need to get initiatives on local ballots
Have you not been watching Gavin vetoing the what he or his donors don’t like in California after the people pass them like that?? Nm
We didn’t try it in 2024. How do you rate the results of that one?
What are you talking about?
The Democrats ran the centrist (again), and vote blue no matter who was the mantra everywhere I looked.
The voters that didn’t fail Kamala.
The voters didn’t fail the Democratic party.
Kamla and the Democratic party failed the voters.
What is your actionable alternative?
Allowing criticism from the left and recognizing that American centrists are right-wingers by another name, no matter their party affiliation.
Criticism has always been allowed, you’re doing it now. How do you actually secure a better alternative?
The top comment is calling this post left splitting, and implying that this type criticism is dangerous/nefarious.
And that’s the comment I was responding to.
But you still made the comment you did. As I said, criticism is and has always been allowed.
Criticism by itself doesn’t accomplish anything. Sure, mollifying centrists has not been ideal, but unless there’s an actionable alternative, it’s the best we’ve got at the moment. I’m all for alternatives, I just see a lot of social inertia and none of the alternatives I see are capable of offering a better outcome in the face of that inertia.
If you have a suggestion to elevate progressives into office, I would sincerely love to hear it; that is my preferred outcome. But complaining about the dominant strategy without offering an actionable alternative is, as the top comment identified, splitting the left.
“Sure we keep eating shit doing it, but it’s the ‘dominant strategy’ so it’s forbid to criticize it!”
Uhh isn’t this exactly what we need before the primaries?
Everytime someone would point out how shitty some of these Dem candidates are we are told “save it for the primaries”. Well here we are.
I’m always taking the side of harm reduction, but that’s pretty much reserved for when you’re in the voting booth and there’s nothing else to be done. I’m some rando from overseas, but this applies everywhere in the world where you can still vote.
Before elections is the time to take action so you don’t end up having to choose between evils
If you want your primary candidate to win then you need to sing the candidates praises. Shitting on the entire DNC is the absolute opposite of that.
Absolutely primary these guys, but remember that most incumbents will win their primaries.
Well, centrist incumbents will, since the party protects them.
Progressive incumbents like Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman didn’t get the favoritism that centrist incumbents like Henry Cuellar do.
Criticism, it’s called criticism.
And your argument is that we should unify with ICE and the Democrats that want to increase funding for ICE? What’s your endgame here?
Even if more progressive candidates don’t win the primaries in those seats, yes, still vote for the Democrats.
nah fuck that. don’t vote against your own self interests. if you’re in a solid blue state (like the one where schumer is senator of), then vote for the actual left leaning person.
So then when do we defeat the democrats that want to increase funding for ICE, raise more money for Israel, start more regime change wars, increase funding for a border wall, and deport more immigrants?
In the primaries
In the 2016 WV Dem primary, Bernie won every single county, but Clinton won the state. Should they have voted harder? Are you asking people to comitt voter fraud and vote 110%?
Bernie got 18 delegates to Clinton’s 11. What do you mean Clinton won the state?
Exactly. Bernie got 18 delegates, Clinton got 11.so how did Clinton win WV with 19 delegates total?
That’s the idea. That or convince fence sitters to not vote.
It’s certainly convenient for the genocide-and-nothing-else wing that any criticism of them is “splitting the party”
“Do not criticize the Party!”
