At what point do Democratic voters get to sue Biden / Harris for gross professional neglegence? Setting aside the morality of supporting genocide, the level of sheer political incompetence and mismanagement that led us to this result is mind boggling.
Remember this the next time the Democrats tell us that a real primary isn’t needed, or the next time they put a thumb on the scale to push a particular nomination. The Democratic establishment is entirely unworthy of their positions.
The sad thing is that this is the perfect time to set up a progressive third party.
AOC and Bernie, maybe even Katie Porter for good measure. If they announced they were leaving the DNC to form a progressive party, I might even quit my job and join them.
And don’t give me the “BuT tHeY wIlL sPliT tHe VoTe!” Bull shit.
I keep giving actual IRL examples of a populist 3rd party breaking a duopoly in other countries, and people are still downvoting me on c/Politics for such an insane and radical idea.
I’m disappointed the progressives within the Democratic party haven’t contemplated this, because they still feel as if they can fix the party from within, as if their own primaries aren’t rigged every election season.
Like yes there is a big chance you won’t win a majority the next election, but it sets you up as a proper competitor to the system, and soon supporters of both Democrats and Republicans will switch sides en masse after they experience the results and realize there is a better alternative.
I wish it were bullshit. It’s just math and some pretty basic political science. There is no way to get even the majority of the Democratic voters base to switch at the same time, and if the shift is gradual the vote is split (whomever you want to say is splitting it) and we lose everything.
It’s also a juvenile fantasy - the dream of just starting from scratch and getting right this time. There are tens of thousands of elected seats in state and federal government - nevermind local. For a party to threaten the Democrats, they would need a large percentage of those offices. State government runs elections and decides who gets on the ballot. You can’t just bypass it. The moment you are a threat, ballot access will be pulled out of reach.
Assuming you could put together a large enough coalition to overcome these obstacles, you are going to have a hell of a time keeping the same corrupting forces from taking over. How many times have we elected politicians with progressive rhetoric only to see them turn on us once elected?
Anyone who has the clout to build a party from scratch, keep it on target, and displace one of two ruling parties would be more than capable of taking a party over, and would do so much more easily with a lot less risk.
Those not voting for Harris sure as fuck mattered. Minus 1M vs minus 12M. She definitely made sure she didn’t get any votes she didn’t want. She didn’t want Nortinios, Muslims. or Unions; and she damn sure didn’t get them.
Yup, exactly. And that’s exactly what I mean about a third party. It needs to happen yesterday and it needs to ignore the “they can’t get in because it just splits the vote” crowd. It needs to be better than the democrats in every way that counts and it needs to do what the people want. So that nobody can go “a single vote doesn’t matter”.
This attitude is exactly why nothing will be achieved in electoral politics and Americans will only get to know freedom when the rest of the world imposes it on you. If the blatantly antidemocratic actions undertaken by the Harris campaign still have you undyingly loyal to this party, you’ll stand by them even after they shoot your mother and run your dog over.
What attitude? There is no attitude, just reality that some folks can’t face. It’s like every damn election people think third parties are a new idea, or that this time they will work. It’s not undying loyalty to want to oust party leadership, it’s just a better strategy.
It’s not a strategy that will ever lead anywhere. The Democratic party is the death of any kind of leftward movement, and it is specifically designed to work this way. You’ll never change it from the inside, and every bit of effort you spend trying to reform it because it’s the “better strategy” would be better spent on building parallel power structures: unions that are independent from either major party, communist parties, mutual aid orgs, community defense orgs in minority communities, bail funds, etc. Because those things won’t win elections but they will create the conditions under which transformative change can take place. I would hope that the genocide in Gaza should illustrate the necessity for abandoning the Democratic party and adopting an entirely different strategy.
This discussion is about electoral strategy, which is one small aspect of political activism. All that other stuff is critically important too, and every one of them just got harder when Trump won. I don’t think the effort would have been “wasted” if a lot more people showed up to vote to keep Trump out of the Whitehouse.
Your electoral arguments are all empty rhetoric. Not one of them is based on reality, or even tries to be. It’s all hand waving, like the left wing version of reactionary politics.
The genocide in Gaza has nothing to do with the “Democratic Party” and everything to do with the people running it. The party itself is an empty shell, but it’s an empty shell that maintains a tremendous amount of loyalty across this country that you have zero strategies to break. These diatribes have been exactly the same for decades.
I’m a rebel by nature. I love the underdog and I love clever strategies that catch Goliath by surprise. I hate the Democratic establishment with a passion and if made god-emperor of America I would gladly see the Clinton’s, Obama, Biden, Harris, Pelosi, Schumer, and a lot of other Democrats do jail time. I should be your easiest convert, and you aren’t even getting close. How the fuck are you going to convince the suburban hordes, the black churches, the union members, and the millions of Americans who put maybe a few minutes a year into thinking about politics? What will you do differently than has been tried for decades?
Your electoral arguments are all empty rhetoric. Not one of them is based on reality
Since Occupy, what success has there been at carving out a space for leftists within the Democratic party? Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, AOC, and Jamaal Bowman. AOC couldn’t be brought to call the genocide in Gaza a genocide until a few months before the ceasefire, and her support of Biden until the last minute just shows that she’s a lot more concerned with her personal career than doing her job as a “progressive” (meaningless term! and she still can’t live up to it). Ilhan Omar and Jamaal Bowman were better at running opposition against the genocide but still were trapped within a party that is beholden to corporate interests more than anything else, so it was only Tlaib that ever actually said anything directly to Netanyahu. And all of this is just symbolic actions, because they’re powerless. To make matters worse, these are your most “progressive” figures in congress, and they’ll still bend the knee on every other foreign policy issue: they’ll go along with the Uyghur genocide claims, call Maduro a dictator, say almost nothing about the Cuban embargo unless Trump just put them back on the list (gotta #resist queens!), support regime change in Iran, etc etc. So there is no left in the Democratic party, there are only some figureheads that make “progressive” Americans feel like their job is done when they don’t represent any kind of threat or hold any kind of power. It’s an illusion, and you’d be much better off without these clowns at all so that regular Americans didn’t falsely believe they had someone in there fighting for them when the truth is they’re 100% on their own until they pick up a gun and join a union.
Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, AOC, and Jamaal Bowman couldn’t be brought to call the genocide in Gaza a genocide
What the fuckity fuck does that have to do with inside vs outside electoral strategy?
trapped within a party that is beholden to corporate interest
Trapped within a SYSTEM that is beholden to corporate interests. You don’t get to dodge that bullet when running under a different party’s banner. In fact, you make it even easier for corporate media to shut you out.
these are your most “progressive” figures in congress
And, who are YOUR figures in Congress?! Oh wait you don’t have any. Well, that sure does make it hard to criticize them.
…until they pick up a gun and join a union.
Union membership shot up under Biden’s pro-union labor department. Now that the labor department answers to Elon Musk, how do you think that will impact union membership?
If it comes down to picking up guns, I’d much rather be facing a liberal police force that at least tries to look like they respect constitutional protections. That’s not what you will get from Trump.
We are in no way better off today because Trump won. Not politically, and certainly not in policy. All of your hand waving has still not even approached a discussion of how a third party strategy would work any better than all the deficiencies you rightly call out about the Democrats.
I got news for you. (It shouldn’t be news since I just said it, but whatever). General elections are also “controlled and legally manipulated” by the two parties.
No matter what way you come at it, every obstacle to taking over a party also exists in ousting a party, only worse. Like I said, I wish the answer was as simple as a new party, but that’s just not reality.
General elections are also “controlled and legally manipulated” by the two parties.
Not to anywhere near the same degree. Primaries are LITERALLY the party’s contest to do what they want with. They can and will make sure that their favored candidates win, to the detriment of anyone who’s too progressive for the corporate donors they serve.
No matter what way you come at it, every obstacle to taking over a party also exists in ousting a party, only worse
Nope. That’s just not true. What you’re advocating for is to change the rules of the game by letting the opponent continue to be the corrupt referee who has control of every ruling and thus every outcome including the end result.
I’m not saying that working outside of the party to effect real systemic change won’t be extremely difficult, but your way is literally impossible.
Not to anywhere near the same degree. Primaries are LITERALLY the party’s contest to do what they want with.
And the general elections are LITERALLY whatever the two parties want them to be. Ballot access is the ballgame for third party candidates and there is LITERALLY nothing preventing them from writing access rules to make it nearly impossible to overcome.
Nope. That’s just not true.
Ah, the “that’s just like your opinion man” argument. I love that one.
What you’re advocating for is to change the rules of the game by letting the opponent continue to be the corrupt referee…
How the fuck do you not get that the rules for national elections come from government fiat ruled by the existing two parties?
I’m not saying that working outside of the party to effect real systemic change won’t be extremely difficult, but your way is literally impossible.
My way has LITERALLY had successes, including big ones like FDR and the New Deal. What successes does the third party approach have to show?
Every damn election we have to pretend like the third party approach has never been tried before. It’s been tried almost every election since forever and has a perfect record of abject failure.
But what if everyone finally just did what your telling them to do, right? If only everyone would just vote how you want them to vote, your political strategy would work perfectly! Damn, you’ve solved politics!
At what point do Democratic voters get to sue Biden / Harris for gross professional neglegence? Setting aside the morality of supporting genocide, the level of sheer political incompetence and mismanagement that led us to this result is mind boggling.
Remember this the next time the Democrats tell us that a real primary isn’t needed, or the next time they put a thumb on the scale to push a particular nomination. The Democratic establishment is entirely unworthy of their positions.
The sad thing is that this is the perfect time to set up a progressive third party.
AOC and Bernie, maybe even Katie Porter for good measure. If they announced they were leaving the DNC to form a progressive party, I might even quit my job and join them.
And don’t give me the “BuT tHeY wIlL sPliT tHe VoTe!” Bull shit.
The DNC is splitting the vote.
I keep giving actual IRL examples of a populist 3rd party breaking a duopoly in other countries, and people are still downvoting me on c/Politics for such an insane and radical idea.
I’m disappointed the progressives within the Democratic party haven’t contemplated this, because they still feel as if they can fix the party from within, as if their own primaries aren’t rigged every election season.
Like yes there is a big chance you won’t win a majority the next election, but it sets you up as a proper competitor to the system, and soon supporters of both Democrats and Republicans will switch sides en masse after they experience the results and realize there is a better alternative.
I wish it were bullshit. It’s just math and some pretty basic political science. There is no way to get even the majority of the Democratic voters base to switch at the same time, and if the shift is gradual the vote is split (whomever you want to say is splitting it) and we lose everything.
It’s also a juvenile fantasy - the dream of just starting from scratch and getting right this time. There are tens of thousands of elected seats in state and federal government - nevermind local. For a party to threaten the Democrats, they would need a large percentage of those offices. State government runs elections and decides who gets on the ballot. You can’t just bypass it. The moment you are a threat, ballot access will be pulled out of reach.
Assuming you could put together a large enough coalition to overcome these obstacles, you are going to have a hell of a time keeping the same corrupting forces from taking over. How many times have we elected politicians with progressive rhetoric only to see them turn on us once elected?
Anyone who has the clout to build a party from scratch, keep it on target, and displace one of two ruling parties would be more than capable of taking a party over, and would do so much more easily with a lot less risk.
You could use the exact same arguments you have for not voting at all, because a single vote doesn’t matter.
Unfortunately, that is also a fact
Those not voting for Harris sure as fuck mattered. Minus 1M vs minus 12M. She definitely made sure she didn’t get any votes she didn’t want. She didn’t want Nortinios, Muslims. or Unions; and she damn sure didn’t get them.
Yup, exactly. And that’s exactly what I mean about a third party. It needs to happen yesterday and it needs to ignore the “they can’t get in because it just splits the vote” crowd. It needs to be better than the democrats in every way that counts and it needs to do what the people want. So that nobody can go “a single vote doesn’t matter”.
This attitude is exactly why nothing will be achieved in electoral politics and Americans will only get to know freedom when the rest of the world imposes it on you. If the blatantly antidemocratic actions undertaken by the Harris campaign still have you undyingly loyal to this party, you’ll stand by them even after they shoot your mother and run your dog over.
What attitude? There is no attitude, just reality that some folks can’t face. It’s like every damn election people think third parties are a new idea, or that this time they will work. It’s not undying loyalty to want to oust party leadership, it’s just a better strategy.
It’s not a strategy that will ever lead anywhere. The Democratic party is the death of any kind of leftward movement, and it is specifically designed to work this way. You’ll never change it from the inside, and every bit of effort you spend trying to reform it because it’s the “better strategy” would be better spent on building parallel power structures: unions that are independent from either major party, communist parties, mutual aid orgs, community defense orgs in minority communities, bail funds, etc. Because those things won’t win elections but they will create the conditions under which transformative change can take place. I would hope that the genocide in Gaza should illustrate the necessity for abandoning the Democratic party and adopting an entirely different strategy.
This discussion is about electoral strategy, which is one small aspect of political activism. All that other stuff is critically important too, and every one of them just got harder when Trump won. I don’t think the effort would have been “wasted” if a lot more people showed up to vote to keep Trump out of the Whitehouse.
Your electoral arguments are all empty rhetoric. Not one of them is based on reality, or even tries to be. It’s all hand waving, like the left wing version of reactionary politics.
The genocide in Gaza has nothing to do with the “Democratic Party” and everything to do with the people running it. The party itself is an empty shell, but it’s an empty shell that maintains a tremendous amount of loyalty across this country that you have zero strategies to break. These diatribes have been exactly the same for decades.
I’m a rebel by nature. I love the underdog and I love clever strategies that catch Goliath by surprise. I hate the Democratic establishment with a passion and if made god-emperor of America I would gladly see the Clinton’s, Obama, Biden, Harris, Pelosi, Schumer, and a lot of other Democrats do jail time. I should be your easiest convert, and you aren’t even getting close. How the fuck are you going to convince the suburban hordes, the black churches, the union members, and the millions of Americans who put maybe a few minutes a year into thinking about politics? What will you do differently than has been tried for decades?
Since Occupy, what success has there been at carving out a space for leftists within the Democratic party? Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, AOC, and Jamaal Bowman. AOC couldn’t be brought to call the genocide in Gaza a genocide until a few months before the ceasefire, and her support of Biden until the last minute just shows that she’s a lot more concerned with her personal career than doing her job as a “progressive” (meaningless term! and she still can’t live up to it). Ilhan Omar and Jamaal Bowman were better at running opposition against the genocide but still were trapped within a party that is beholden to corporate interests more than anything else, so it was only Tlaib that ever actually said anything directly to Netanyahu. And all of this is just symbolic actions, because they’re powerless. To make matters worse, these are your most “progressive” figures in congress, and they’ll still bend the knee on every other foreign policy issue: they’ll go along with the Uyghur genocide claims, call Maduro a dictator, say almost nothing about the Cuban embargo unless Trump just put them back on the list (gotta #resist queens!), support regime change in Iran, etc etc. So there is no left in the Democratic party, there are only some figureheads that make “progressive” Americans feel like their job is done when they don’t represent any kind of threat or hold any kind of power. It’s an illusion, and you’d be much better off without these clowns at all so that regular Americans didn’t falsely believe they had someone in there fighting for them when the truth is they’re 100% on their own until they pick up a gun and join a union.
What the fuckity fuck does that have to do with inside vs outside electoral strategy?
Trapped within a SYSTEM that is beholden to corporate interests. You don’t get to dodge that bullet when running under a different party’s banner. In fact, you make it even easier for corporate media to shut you out.
And, who are YOUR figures in Congress?! Oh wait you don’t have any. Well, that sure does make it hard to criticize them.
Union membership shot up under Biden’s pro-union labor department. Now that the labor department answers to Elon Musk, how do you think that will impact union membership?
If it comes down to picking up guns, I’d much rather be facing a liberal police force that at least tries to look like they respect constitutional protections. That’s not what you will get from Trump.
We are in no way better off today because Trump won. Not politically, and certainly not in policy. All of your hand waving has still not even approached a discussion of how a third party strategy would work any better than all the deficiencies you rightly call out about the Democrats.
Where else should I put my vote?
Did I suggest anywhere not voting for Democrats in a general election? We need to oust these losers in primaries.
Would that be the Democratic primaries? The ones controlled and legally manipulated by the party leadership itself?
If those are the contests you’re depending on for achieving a fair and representative result, I have some oceanfront property in Nebraska to sell you…
I got news for you. (It shouldn’t be news since I just said it, but whatever). General elections are also “controlled and legally manipulated” by the two parties.
No matter what way you come at it, every obstacle to taking over a party also exists in ousting a party, only worse. Like I said, I wish the answer was as simple as a new party, but that’s just not reality.
Not to anywhere near the same degree. Primaries are LITERALLY the party’s contest to do what they want with. They can and will make sure that their favored candidates win, to the detriment of anyone who’s too progressive for the corporate donors they serve.
Nope. That’s just not true. What you’re advocating for is to change the rules of the game by letting the opponent continue to be the corrupt referee who has control of every ruling and thus every outcome including the end result.
I’m not saying that working outside of the party to effect real systemic change won’t be extremely difficult, but your way is literally impossible.
And the general elections are LITERALLY whatever the two parties want them to be. Ballot access is the ballgame for third party candidates and there is LITERALLY nothing preventing them from writing access rules to make it nearly impossible to overcome.
Ah, the “that’s just like your opinion man” argument. I love that one.
How the fuck do you not get that the rules for national elections come from government fiat ruled by the existing two parties?
My way has LITERALLY had successes, including big ones like FDR and the New Deal. What successes does the third party approach have to show?
Every damn election we have to pretend like the third party approach has never been tried before. It’s been tried almost every election since forever and has a perfect record of abject failure.
But what if everyone finally just did what your telling them to do, right? If only everyone would just vote how you want them to vote, your political strategy would work perfectly! Damn, you’ve solved politics!
Write in. If you are going to waste your vote you might as well sent it to someone who will work for you. Biden sure as hell didn’t for me.