How does that help anyone? That would just be performative
The Democratic party is right there, and it stands for nothing. It has all the infrastructure set up already. So let’s take it.
Let’s tea party the Democratic party and force them left, kicking and screaming. Let’s build a large enough faction of actual progressives and leftists that Democrats are forced to come to the table. We flip red seats and take vacant ones. Then we primary incumbent Democrats who don’t get with the game plan
That’s what the whole fighting oligarchy tour is about
The Democratic party is right there, and it stands for nothing.
That’d be nice, but no. The Democratic Party stands for keeping leftists out of power and, if possible, keeping neoliberals in power. It’s a shit platform, but it’s there and it means they’ll fight you tooth and nail (or simply kick you out, as they’re trying to do to David Hogg) if you try to bring even center-left politics to the party.
I’m talking about a hostile takeover, we make a big enough faction and we can take the party, along with the infrastructure and less involved voters
That’d be nice, but my point is that the party will fight you tooth and nail if you try to do that, and if you choose to work within the party they’ll have a lot more leverage over you via party bylaws, appeals to party unity, etc, and they’ll use that leverage to, for example, dilute your political program and drive a rift between your base and leadership and between more and less dedicated members of the movement. These aren’t trivial concerns; handled improperly (or maybe even if handled properly) they could very well spell the end of your attempted takeover.
Why do you think they’re trying to kick out Higgs? It’s not because they think he’s more dangerous as an independent
Because he has a high-ranking office within the party and doesn’t have wide national appeal. Also note that Hoggs isn’t a leftist; he’s a liberal who simply wants Democrat gerontocrats gone. He’s running a completely different path from the one we’re talking about here, and still there’s a good chance he gets kicked out and proves my point that the DNC won’t tolerate change from within.
And what is the other option? Start up a third party? We don’t have time for that.
If the stars aligned, best case, it would take a bare minimum of 2 election cycles to get a party established. One to get enough seats to form a voting block and gain legitimacy to the average voter, then another to gain enough seats to be more than a side note
And meanwhile, Democrats will still exist, and since they hate the left more than fascism they’ll still fight tooth and nail.
Why? What’s the deadline? If you mean to stop fascism then either way fascism isn’t going to be stopped at the ballot box; parties and elections are day after stuff.
It kinda can… This brand of incompetent fascism at least
Who are key holders of power right now? Trump and his backers haven’t solidified their control, the military leadership is balking at the incompetence, the judiciary is realizing if they cave to Trump they’ll give up all power, and the oligarchs running the media and economy are getting cold feet
They still need Congress. And with Musk proving himself incapable of primarying anyone, the. Cracks are forming in the solid front they had initially… The tea party turned maga was able to take over the party for exactly that reason, and now Trump’s endorsement is becoming a liability. Hell, even MTG is making moves to break with Trump
We don’t have to wait for elections to make a difference. The fighting oligarchy tour is making everyone pay very careful attention to election projections - in special elections we’ve already shown the game has changed
We don’t have time, because this is our chance. Both parties are in turmoil, and the people are louder than ever. And most of what Trump has done hasn’t actually hit people yet… This summer is going to be rough
This is the greatest chance the left has had in a century. If we can lock into what we do next and unite, Trump could be stopped and the midterms could be a true tuning point. We could get the momentum to fix things
Or, we can let the democrats come back in and grandstand about civility and reaching across the isle to the monsters.
The Democratic party is going to win in a landslide the next two elections, whether in their current form or under new management
It kinda can… This brand of incompetent fascism at least
Fascism is always incompetent, and it always (when it gets to the state America is in now) succeeds despite its incompetence.
They still need Congress.
They won’t by the midterms. I’d like to remind you that Trump was inaugurated only three and a half months ago. He still has almost 7 times as much time as has passed between Jan 20th and today before the midterms to pass his agenda, and project 2025 is 42% done. They’re trying to pass the SAVE act, striking a deal with Rwanda to ramp up deportations and now intimidating the judiciary. This is a lot farther along than you seem to be thinking. By the midterms, Trump will have the infrastructure in place to claim the election is stolen and declare martial law if he doesn’t get his way.
agreed, the Dems are beyond redemption. Hard to stomach all the replies here, implication being that after enduring 4 more years of Trump we’re faced with another neoliberal smiley gladhand who will say some of the right things but work only to maintain the status quo and corporate hegemony. But alas, we can’t have meaningful change until people come around to the reality of what the Dems and Repugs have been doing since the 1970s.
Wake up you fucking jackasses, Dems are not going to save you.
America has FPTP—she loses any practical chance of influence if she does that. Unless you vote for one of the main two parties, you create the same outcome as if you voted for the party you like least.
The better bet is to push her up to the top of the party and drag it kicking and screaming leftward. Then frankly, start pushing for voting reform to fix this problem
So do what AOC did and get involved in changing it then? It’s certainly more left with her in it than not—imagine if half the party was made up with people with more left wing views. I do not understand why so many of you guys are so inert on this.
The alternative is revolution, and given that involves personal sacrifice in the most hyper-individualist country on the planet, you’re going to have an uphill struggle with getting enough people together to even make the news.
One option is a practical thing you can actually do, without having to wait for anyone else, to start on a path of improving things to align with your views. The other is basically waiting and hoping things eventually get so bad it short-circuits the capitalist propaganda that’s been shoved down every American’s throat since they could breathe. Then that you can get enough people together for a violent revolution at all, let alone enough for one to be successful.
Frankly, if you’re waiting anyway, you may as well get involved in the thing you can do today. Even if at the very least just to get voting reform done—then you can at least vote for a third party and benefit from that vote, could even be a vanguard party!
I think I’d rather she stay. We all wish there were an alternative, but historically third parties have not done well. Easier to get her in as the head of the thing and clean it up that way.
Why? It’s longer and less obvious than “establish party now run for president tomorrow,” but with a progressive leftwing third party a clear path to success exists. Now technically one also exists within the Democratic Party, but to take that path you’d need to antagonize the old guard so much that you might as well not be a party member at all, and they’ll still demand ideological or practical compromises to keep you in the party. This will lose you legitimacy with your base in the same way many progressives are souring on AOC, either significantly curtailing the effort or destroying it entirely. The problem with working within the party is simple: You’ll never get anything done by appeasing neoliberals.
to take that path you’d need to antagonize the old guard so much that you might as well not be a party member at all, and they’ll still demand ideological or practical compromises to keep you in the party
You have to do this regardless. You cannot have a viable third party without pulling a majority of Democratic voters away from the existing party. There simply isn’t enough votes to beat the GOP by starting a new progressive only party. And if you think you’re gonna pull conservative voters, hello Kamala Harris’ campaign manager.
We have a greater advantage in the primaries than we do during the general election, but my fellow progressives just refuse to fucking show up. Bernie absolutely could have won ,even with the DNC putting their thumb on the scale. You can say it’s rigged against us, but the numbers don’t lie, progressive voters haven’t shown up to vote and it only benefits the GOP.
Of course, but my point is that if they’re gonna hate your guts and sabotage you anyway, you might as well make sure you have a free hand to take them on rather than pointlessly try to appease them. This way you give them less leverage over you, or in other words you don’t give them consent to sabotage you to their heart’s content. Of course they can still try, but for example tools like party bylaws and appeals to party unity cease to mean shit. This is crucial because while neoliberals like to play dumb, they’re not dumb; when they come to wreck your movement they’re going to go for the jugular. See for example how AOC lost the Democratic Socialists of America’s endorsement by compromising on Israel and how the DNC is trying to kick David Hoggs out of the party. The way I see it is that while there are a few paths for a progressive group trying to take over/cannibalize the Democratic Party, all of them are mutually exclusive with compromise with neoliberals.
Bernie absolutely could have won ,even with the DNC putting their thumb on the scale. You can say it’s rigged against us, but the numbers don’t lie, progressive voters haven’t shown up to vote and it only benefits the GOP.
Sounds about right but can you provide those numbers?
Establishing a party is very hard, in a country as big as the US it takes decades.
On the other hand, the political establishment will push back against a third party outside the Democratic Party just as much as inside. I honestly don’t know what’s the right path.
If we could pass Ranked Choice voting, those third and more parties could actually do something. In neighboring Idaho, there were signs trying to prevent RCV on the grounds that it was “confusing”. Propaganda gonna propaganda.
Remember that half of Americans are dumb enough to vote for Trump. A lot of the other half are also just voting for their favorite letter, without any thought of who’s holding it. Even with RCV, there’s an enormous amount of work to convince people who’ve been voting for their favorite letter for decades, who’ve been told for decades that politicians are all the same, to even pay enough attention to realize there’s another option.
RCV would be a start, but the start of a similarly decades-long process. IMO, it would be easier and faster to reform Dems from within. Recruit properly progressive candidates to primary the tired, old corporate Dems, inspire some of our younger non-voters, and change the party direction. Still take a few election cycles, but you’d keep the people who just vote for their favorite letter.
Sadly, that’s not going to happen any time soon. In fact, the Republicans are even now working on passing new legislation that will ban RCV in elections for federal office. Who’s going to stop them. There are maybe half a dozen people in all of Congress that would support RCV. This bill is almost certain to be passed.
Unfortunately the Democratic establishment is against ranked choice voting just as much as the Republicans, because it would challenge the two party system.
Alaska and Maine have managed to get it so I think there’s still hope on that front so long as we continue to have free and fair elections…and that law doesn’t pass/is struck down.
Most Dems and independents would support RCV because it increases their chances of continued power.
There has been a lot of disinformation out there about RCV so you can’t even count on support from those who would benefit if they fall for the propaganda. It is definitely an uphill battle.
all she needs now to be taken seriously is to leave the sold-out Democrat party
lol okay. And I’m a nobody too, that’s why I have a Lemmy account
How does that help anyone? That would just be performative
The Democratic party is right there, and it stands for nothing. It has all the infrastructure set up already. So let’s take it.
Let’s tea party the Democratic party and force them left, kicking and screaming. Let’s build a large enough faction of actual progressives and leftists that Democrats are forced to come to the table. We flip red seats and take vacant ones. Then we primary incumbent Democrats who don’t get with the game plan
That’s what the whole fighting oligarchy tour is about
LOL
That’d be nice, but no. The Democratic Party stands for keeping leftists out of power and, if possible, keeping neoliberals in power. It’s a shit platform, but it’s there and it means they’ll fight you tooth and nail (or simply kick you out, as they’re trying to do to David Hogg) if you try to bring even center-left politics to the party.
Oh, I’m certain they’ll fight, but I’m not talking about changing the party. I’m talking about taking their base to take their seats
I’m talking about a hostile takeover, we make a big enough faction and we can take the party, along with the infrastructure and less involved voters
Why do you think they’re trying to kick out Higgs? It’s not because they think he’s more dangerous as an independent
That’d be nice, but my point is that the party will fight you tooth and nail if you try to do that, and if you choose to work within the party they’ll have a lot more leverage over you via party bylaws, appeals to party unity, etc, and they’ll use that leverage to, for example, dilute your political program and drive a rift between your base and leadership and between more and less dedicated members of the movement. These aren’t trivial concerns; handled improperly (or maybe even if handled properly) they could very well spell the end of your attempted takeover.
Because he has a high-ranking office within the party and doesn’t have wide national appeal. Also note that Hoggs isn’t a leftist; he’s a liberal who simply wants Democrat gerontocrats gone. He’s running a completely different path from the one we’re talking about here, and still there’s a good chance he gets kicked out and proves my point that the DNC won’t tolerate change from within.
And what is the other option? Start up a third party? We don’t have time for that.
If the stars aligned, best case, it would take a bare minimum of 2 election cycles to get a party established. One to get enough seats to form a voting block and gain legitimacy to the average voter, then another to gain enough seats to be more than a side note
And meanwhile, Democrats will still exist, and since they hate the left more than fascism they’ll still fight tooth and nail.
We don’t have time or other options.
Why? What’s the deadline? If you mean to stop fascism then either way fascism isn’t going to be stopped at the ballot box; parties and elections are day after stuff.
It kinda can… This brand of incompetent fascism at least
Who are key holders of power right now? Trump and his backers haven’t solidified their control, the military leadership is balking at the incompetence, the judiciary is realizing if they cave to Trump they’ll give up all power, and the oligarchs running the media and economy are getting cold feet
They still need Congress. And with Musk proving himself incapable of primarying anyone, the. Cracks are forming in the solid front they had initially… The tea party turned maga was able to take over the party for exactly that reason, and now Trump’s endorsement is becoming a liability. Hell, even MTG is making moves to break with Trump
We don’t have to wait for elections to make a difference. The fighting oligarchy tour is making everyone pay very careful attention to election projections - in special elections we’ve already shown the game has changed
We don’t have time, because this is our chance. Both parties are in turmoil, and the people are louder than ever. And most of what Trump has done hasn’t actually hit people yet… This summer is going to be rough
This is the greatest chance the left has had in a century. If we can lock into what we do next and unite, Trump could be stopped and the midterms could be a true tuning point. We could get the momentum to fix things
Or, we can let the democrats come back in and grandstand about civility and reaching across the isle to the monsters.
The Democratic party is going to win in a landslide the next two elections, whether in their current form or under new management
Fascism is always incompetent, and it always (when it gets to the state America is in now) succeeds despite its incompetence.
They won’t by the midterms. I’d like to remind you that Trump was inaugurated only three and a half months ago. He still has almost 7 times as much time as has passed between Jan 20th and today before the midterms to pass his agenda, and project 2025 is 42% done. They’re trying to pass the SAVE act, striking a deal with Rwanda to ramp up deportations and now intimidating the judiciary. This is a lot farther along than you seem to be thinking. By the midterms, Trump will have the infrastructure in place to claim the election is stolen and declare martial law if he doesn’t get his way.
agreed, the Dems are beyond redemption. Hard to stomach all the replies here, implication being that after enduring 4 more years of Trump we’re faced with another neoliberal smiley gladhand who will say some of the right things but work only to maintain the status quo and corporate hegemony. But alas, we can’t have meaningful change until people come around to the reality of what the Dems and Repugs have been doing since the 1970s.
Wake up you fucking jackasses, Dems are not going to save you.
It’s just mass delusion at this stage if anyone believes the democrats will embrace leftism.
America has FPTP—she loses any practical chance of influence if she does that. Unless you vote for one of the main two parties, you create the same outcome as if you voted for the party you like least.
The better bet is to push her up to the top of the party and drag it kicking and screaming leftward. Then frankly, start pushing for voting reform to fix this problem
There is no reforming a right wing party or pushing politicians left. The only influence in DC is money, they don’t give a flying fuck what we think
So do what AOC did and get involved in changing it then? It’s certainly more left with her in it than not—imagine if half the party was made up with people with more left wing views. I do not understand why so many of you guys are so inert on this.
The alternative is revolution, and given that involves personal sacrifice in the most hyper-individualist country on the planet, you’re going to have an uphill struggle with getting enough people together to even make the news.
One option is a practical thing you can actually do, without having to wait for anyone else, to start on a path of improving things to align with your views. The other is basically waiting and hoping things eventually get so bad it short-circuits the capitalist propaganda that’s been shoved down every American’s throat since they could breathe. Then that you can get enough people together for a violent revolution at all, let alone enough for one to be successful.
Frankly, if you’re waiting anyway, you may as well get involved in the thing you can do today. Even if at the very least just to get voting reform done—then you can at least vote for a third party and benefit from that vote, could even be a vanguard party!
The party is still republican-lite, but now it’s your fault for not being involved enough.
Chumming up to the Cheney’s isn’t Republican lite. That’s just a slip away from Trump.
I live in the UK, my impact has its limits. I’m involved in my country though
is this still about being cisgender
They love their chains
I think I’d rather she stay. We all wish there were an alternative, but historically third parties have not done well. Easier to get her in as the head of the thing and clean it up that way.
Will never happen though, sadly.
Uh… What makes you think that’s ever going to happen?
Still more chance of it happening than a viable third party, that’s the argument.
Why? It’s longer and less obvious than “establish party now run for president tomorrow,” but with a progressive leftwing third party a clear path to success exists. Now technically one also exists within the Democratic Party, but to take that path you’d need to antagonize the old guard so much that you might as well not be a party member at all, and they’ll still demand ideological or practical compromises to keep you in the party. This will lose you legitimacy with your base in the same way many progressives are souring on AOC, either significantly curtailing the effort or destroying it entirely. The problem with working within the party is simple: You’ll never get anything done by appeasing neoliberals.
You have to do this regardless. You cannot have a viable third party without pulling a majority of Democratic voters away from the existing party. There simply isn’t enough votes to beat the GOP by starting a new progressive only party. And if you think you’re gonna pull conservative voters, hello Kamala Harris’ campaign manager.
We have a greater advantage in the primaries than we do during the general election, but my fellow progressives just refuse to fucking show up. Bernie absolutely could have won ,even with the DNC putting their thumb on the scale. You can say it’s rigged against us, but the numbers don’t lie, progressive voters haven’t shown up to vote and it only benefits the GOP.
Of course, but my point is that if they’re gonna hate your guts and sabotage you anyway, you might as well make sure you have a free hand to take them on rather than pointlessly try to appease them. This way you give them less leverage over you, or in other words you don’t give them consent to sabotage you to their heart’s content. Of course they can still try, but for example tools like party bylaws and appeals to party unity cease to mean shit. This is crucial because while neoliberals like to play dumb, they’re not dumb; when they come to wreck your movement they’re going to go for the jugular. See for example how AOC lost the Democratic Socialists of America’s endorsement by compromising on Israel and how the DNC is trying to kick David Hoggs out of the party. The way I see it is that while there are a few paths for a progressive group trying to take over/cannibalize the Democratic Party, all of them are mutually exclusive with compromise with neoliberals.
Sounds about right but can you provide those numbers?
Establishing a party is very hard, in a country as big as the US it takes decades.
On the other hand, the political establishment will push back against a third party outside the Democratic Party just as much as inside. I honestly don’t know what’s the right path.
If we could pass Ranked Choice voting, those third and more parties could actually do something. In neighboring Idaho, there were signs trying to prevent RCV on the grounds that it was “confusing”. Propaganda gonna propaganda.
Remember that half of Americans are dumb enough to vote for Trump. A lot of the other half are also just voting for their favorite letter, without any thought of who’s holding it. Even with RCV, there’s an enormous amount of work to convince people who’ve been voting for their favorite letter for decades, who’ve been told for decades that politicians are all the same, to even pay enough attention to realize there’s another option.
RCV would be a start, but the start of a similarly decades-long process. IMO, it would be easier and faster to reform Dems from within. Recruit properly progressive candidates to primary the tired, old corporate Dems, inspire some of our younger non-voters, and change the party direction. Still take a few election cycles, but you’d keep the people who just vote for their favorite letter.
Never gonna happen though, sadly. If the Dems ever turn anti corporate I’ll happily eat my hat though.
Sadly, that’s not going to happen any time soon. In fact, the Republicans are even now working on passing new legislation that will ban RCV in elections for federal office. Who’s going to stop them. There are maybe half a dozen people in all of Congress that would support RCV. This bill is almost certain to be passed.
Unfortunately the Democratic establishment is against ranked choice voting just as much as the Republicans, because it would challenge the two party system.
Yep, hence my statement that there are only about half a dozen in all of Congress that support it.
Alaska and Maine have managed to get it so I think there’s still hope on that front so long as we continue to have free and fair elections…and that law doesn’t pass/is struck down.
Most Dems and independents would support RCV because it increases their chances of continued power.
There has been a lot of disinformation out there about RCV so you can’t even count on support from those who would benefit if they fall for the propaganda. It is definitely an uphill battle.