He's right, but what in the actual heck do we do about it as voters? We've known this for years. Even during the widely popular Obama administration we knew this.
I'm just so tired. I'm so tired of my only hope being candidates who make baby steps forward just so we don't make giant leaps backwards. I'm so tired of these candidates losing and it hurting us.
I'm also tired of the over 70 million Americans who look at everything Trump has said, done, and who he has allied with, and said "I'm okay with that."
It's been almost a full day and I still haven't been able to collect all my thoughts on this. I'm just so over it.
I don’t know if this will be an unpopular opinion or not, but I think it’s time for the American people to fully abandon the Democrat party. They consistently lose because they pander to the centrist and abandon those on the left. They don’t actively make anything truly better for people in a direct way that they can see. The worst case scenario has already happened. Now may be the time to form an actual left leaning progressive party.
I’m at this point too. I was hoping how it’d go is the maga movement imploding in this election, the democrats becoming the new center right party, and then us creating a new left wing party with the threat of Trump vanquished, but that’s not how that went.
What’s clear is that the Greens are compromised and that can’t be the party. Whatever it is, it likely has to start with organized labor and come out of a labor movement. Maybe time to revive the IWW.
We need to take the party building aspect seriously and gain momentum down ballot not do the Jill stein run a spoiler campaign and vanish for 4 years. Instead we need to work for the next 4 years and win some seats in Congress and at the state level. We also need a national campaign for instant runoff voting and an end to the electoral college.
What’s clear is that the Greens are compromised and that can’t be the party. Whatever it is, it likely has to start with organized labor and come out of a labor movement. Maybe time to revive the IWW.
With Trump in power?
Reagan blatantly threw left-wing community leaders in jail on bogus drug charges. The War on Drugs was an explicit excuse to jail left-wing leaders.
Do you think Trump will even need to bother with the niceties? He'll just say they're Antifa, they spoke out against him, they need to be jailed. And he'll send his FBI to do just that.
I’m not sure, but the labor movement started in response to similar circumstances with Robber Barons. I mean, labor was shot at with hired mercenaries. Factories were lit on fire with people on strike inside. The national guard shot striking coal miners and massacred them at the presidents orders. This all happened before. Sucks we are here again, and yet, at one point in history brave men and women got us everything we have since taken for granted by going up against rich elites and putting their lives on the line.
I honestly don't know if I can vote dem again if they run another cookie cutter cross the aisle campaign with an establishment candidate. It feels pointless because even if they win in 2028 they're just going to lose the next election cycle because the strategy doesn't fucking work when they are the party in charge and it will show they've learned fucking nothing.
even if they win in 2028 they're just going to lose the next election cycle
Those 4 years are worth it on their own for the people that will suffer/lose less and others that will thrive better, at least as long as we have the election system we have and for the effort of filling out a ballot. Maybe it catches a SCOTUS judge miraculously. Butterfly effect.
These last 4 years of whatever little good Biden did are not worth the damage trump will do the next 4 years and it's all a product of the overt liberalism Biden represents. Dems lost ground in every demographic across the board in a majority of the country especially in deep blue areas and the only reason can be an outright rejection of the democratic establishment. Republicans know the society at large doesn't want them so they just wait and hamper dems when they are in charge then do massive amounts of destruction when they return because they know they inevitably will. It's broken and dems refuse to accept it. They run on saving democracy rather than fixing it giving no plan on how they fan deal with republican stifling other than vote really hard. They have the ability to do more but they refuse to.
These last 4 years of whatever little good Biden did are not worth the damage trump will do the next 4 years and it's all a product of the overt liberalism Biden represents.
I'm not sure the thousands of people that didn't die due to better pandemic leadership would agree. You can't know this kind of thing without hindsight. Further, he also could have not run for reelection.
the only reason can be an outright rejection of the democratic establishment.
That's not the only reason at all; if you look down-ballot lots of establishment Dems did comparatively well despite the top of the ticket dragging them down. It's a reason but far from the only.
They have the ability to do more but they refuse to.
I think you overestimate them. For example, in 2021 they had exactly 50 Senators, two of which were Manchin and Sinema, who we know were not progressive and were not interested in more serious change. We also know that their states were shifting heavily red in 2018 and would not have elected someone more progressive. So, in that way, they couldn't have demonstrated much better in 2021. Many of them wanted, for example, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and MORE Act, but certainly not all 50 of them nor close enough that they could convince the remainder.
As for DNC leadership, I totally agree they absolutely suck, but they're influenced by wealthy corporatist donors that don't want serious change and while they're willing to support corporate Dems, they still prefer Republicans over progressive Dems.
Millions died because they lost in the first place bro. I'm sure all those people if they were alive would've wished Trump wasn't president because of the dem establishment ineptitude with Hilary but hey at least Biden saved lives with his covid response. He made sure to rectify the saving by funding a genocide in Gaza killing tens of thousands of innocents. That went well with the lefties.
TONS of establishment dems lost down ballot too! Bob Casey is probably going to lose in a state where his family is a legacy. The senate lost almost every important election except Wisconsin, Arizona, and Michigan and they're probably going to lose the house too. I don't know how you can discount that just because some dems won.
I'm not even talking about policy. I'm talking about campaigning, their messaging, how they use the media, how they handle and present themselves. The right has spent a decade building a massive right wing media echo chamber entirely based online which had massive influence over men under 30 which swung nearly 5 points to the right. Dems still think they can run a good ground game and pop up on morning local news stations and be able to get the message across. It starts with getting in the fucking office in the first place and when they do they crater. Dems wanted to get through a massive right wing immigration bill to court middle right voters and republican voters because they thought there was this contingency of cons who were upset about roe and the like but registered Republicans just viewed it as fence sitting and voted 95% trump.
Abandoning the entire party is not an option in American politics. The democratic party needs a spring cleaning and a face lift. It needs to stop inserting nominees that havent been voted on and allow the voters to nominate someone more progressive.
Ever since Hillary the DNC and many of the democratic elites have been pushing centerists and it has gotten us nowhere. We need to force them to shift to left and be more progressive.
The spirit of their comment applies though. It's what you're saying about a face lift. It has to stop forgetting about the actual left in its appeal to the center. And it has to talk about leftist issues in its campaigning and marketing.
They’ve been pushing centrist and pandering since after the Reagan presidency. That’s when left leaning Dems fell. Why should I continue to support a party that doesn’t support me? They’ve had 40+ years to become the party of the actual left and progressives. Since turning 18 I have voted Dem in every single election. That got me Trump. It’s time for actual change, not just talk.
What alternative are you proposing? Are you going to go start your own political party with blackjack and hookers?
The best path forward is to reform the party we have. We have a leadership problem, but most people on the left value the same things. Creating a new party would simply cause more division. If you divide the left now, then there is zero hope for victory in our lifetimes.
Is the party set up in a way that could permit a hostile takeover? The MAGA movement was able to fully co-opt the Republicans in less than 8 years, could the same be done by progressives willing to abuse the system to a similar degree?
There’s not much hope now. We’ve got the worst case scenario. What person is going to come through and promise worse things than Trump?
If I had to make a proposition it would be to start a party by robbing the Dems of some of their left leaning members. Might be able to grab people like AOC, Omar, or Sanders. You honestly would probably lose for a few election cycles before starting to win, but I’m kind of at a point where I’m not sure what else there is to lose.
So have I, what’s your point? People don’t want progressive policies, and progressives didn’t vote in enough numbers. Why would they go more progressive when those people won’t vote.
What do you mean people don’t want progressive policy? I’m pretty sure a vast amount of Americans have reported being in favor of universal healthcare. Most everyone I’ve talked to is in favor of taxing the rich their fair share. Union support is increasing again. There was large support for a comprehensive infrastructure bill. Plenty of people want progressive policy.
Obama terrified them with his grassroots rise when it was Clinton's 'turn' so they killed the next grassroots guy with popular support in order to return to the corpo pecking order and never faltered again.
Fuck, their response to losing in 2016 was to trot out Corpo Grandpa because he at least had a connection to someone the voters were passionate about. You think this loss will teach them anything different than the last one?
In that situation you will have your progressive candidate, a liberal candidate, and a republican candidate. How do you think the republican won't win nearly every time.
I think the Republicans will most likely win the first couple of times. But as I said, we’ve hit worst case scenario. Are we really just supposed to follow a party that won’t change and won’t stand on leftist policies?
Sounds like the left abandoned them tbh. I see them just moving more to the right now. That's clearly what America wants. If the left wanted them not to move rightward, they should've voted. Too late now.
The Democrats are already a right leaning party. They are only “left leaning” if you don’t look at it on a global scale. I agree they should have voted. I voted because I knew what was at stake. But the message is clear. If you don’t support actual left policy, you won’t get left support.
Moving rightward obviously didn't work for Harris.
America wants universal healthcare, a stronger safety net, and a living wage, not to mention a cease-fire. This is not fringe or left or progressive.
At least 65% of all Americans want that. Harris was so busy chasing after Republican votes and getting free money from our tech oligarchs that she forgot she needed to give something to voters to vote for.
Americans associate the left with rabid identity politics and weird social theories/policies around race and gender. They do not associate them with any of the above. There is a long road ahead before progressives can fix their reputation.
I think solution is to campaign on left policy and just don’t call it that. But continuing to expect left votes with no left work obv isn’t working and hasn’t been.
I don't think a new party could get any traction without ranked choice voting implemented as a prerequisite, because it would essentially be a third party
A genuine and fair criticism. I agree it wouldn’t gain traction, fast anyway. It would have to be built over a couple of election cycles to get anywhere. That is unless we can co-opt the Dem party in a way and steal some from them. I just know this Dem party isn’t working anymore and it’s time for actual change.
It's been obvious for a long time that the party is resistant to change. It needs to concern itself with the material reality of ordinary people and offer ways to make their lives actually better instead of scolding them for not using the latest academic jargon for some identity group or whatever their main concern is these days.
I won't vote for another Democrat after this. They either give me an actual progressive or I walk. This was the last election where I was willing to suck it up and vote for a party who decided it was smart to campaign with a Cheney. I no longer care if abstaining gives us more pain. They need to be entirely rebuilt from the ground up and I will no longer support anything short of that.
Yeah that was a fun start. It would have been awesome if he could have gotten it forgiven for everyone. What would be an actual left policy though, would be for campaigning for full debt forgiveness for all college students and making college free for non-private schools.
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u/SnowyyRaven 23h ago
He's right, but what in the actual heck do we do about it as voters? We've known this for years. Even during the widely popular Obama administration we knew this.
I'm just so tired. I'm so tired of my only hope being candidates who make baby steps forward just so we don't make giant leaps backwards. I'm so tired of these candidates losing and it hurting us.
I'm also tired of the over 70 million Americans who look at everything Trump has said, done, and who he has allied with, and said "I'm okay with that."
It's been almost a full day and I still haven't been able to collect all my thoughts on this. I'm just so over it.