Surely the path to victory is to tack further right again. Surely, more Republicans will all of a sudden come to their senses…
/s
Surely, more Republicans will all of a sudden come to their senses…
Most of the time a Republican wins, it’s on a platform of Ending The Wars and Protecting the Entitlements and Creating The Jobs with government policy.
Sort of the joke in all this. Guys like Bush, Trump, and Reagan all campaigned far to the left of how they actually governed. They’d take office, their popularity would tank, they’d go into the next election cycle with underwater approval, and Democrats would campaign to the right of the Republicans on the grounds that Reagan / Bush / Trump were incredibly popular.
Periodically, a Democrat will win a primary to the left of the favorite for the office. But they’ll immediately tack to the right again during the general for fear of looking to radical in the national media.
The “centrist”/right-leaning/neo-liberal democrats would rather rip the party in half than to use this swell of popular support for leftist ideals to win elections and make real change. The old Dems will flail and writhe and hurt themselves in confusion as the old guard dies and change happens whether they like it or not. They’ll try to kick leftists out, jump ship themselves (going independent, forming a new third party, merging with libertarians, or maybe going all the way to going Republican), and bomb the entire party with infighting, fixing nominations with anti-democratic party tricks, and intentionally letting republicans win rather than supporting a socialist candidate. Can’t wait for this cluster fuck.
They’ve been doing half of what you listed, for decades.
I’m holding on to the hope that DSA candidates winning more elections in the face of centrist nonsense will make moderates realize they’re being self defeating by doing this kind of crap. A real working coalition of socialists and liberals could be a political juggernaut that could also create some good policies together.
I think what people forget is that moderates are just fighting for what they believe in, just like progressives do. The problem is they do not want the same thing. Moderates and progressives have fundamentally different motivations. Democratic moderates are not simply progressives that have pragmatically decided to pursue centrism to win the most gains they can. They’re not progressives willing to settle for a moderate option. Moderation is their actual desired goal. They themselves are mostly wealthy coastal elites. They’re quite comfortable in their lives, and their main goal is to protect the status quo. They fundamentally do not have the same goal of crafting meaningful legislation that progressives do.
For Democratic centrists, eeking out a single seat majority in the Senate is mission accomplished. Progressives need to push for greater gains, as they want 60 votes to pass major reforms. Conservatives need 60 votes, as they want to implement Christian Nationalism. But Centrists? Neither party ever getting more than 55 votes in the Senate is their ideal outcome. Such a government will be able to pass modest bipartisan bills that don’t rock the boat, but no real change to either the right or the left will be possible.
Liberals ultimately have little desire to create a “political juggernaut,” as a juggernaut is only useful if you want to force through real change.
Al-sayed is the key. If he beats Stevens AND the establishment falls in line, there is hope. If they don’t, there isn’t.
He’s just so…reasonable.
IDK, my wife and I are both Democrats in MI and we’re both voting for him Tuesday.
My analogy for this attitude is 90s MTV executives and producers not understanding the appeal of Primus, giving up on music, and becoming surveillance as entertainment with reality TV because we wouldn’t sit and listen to Train, gin blossoms, modest mouse, etc.
Because that’s what they’re paid to do, obviously.
The corporate centrist wing would sooner switch to the republican party than do anything helpful for their constituents.
The corporate centrist wing is largely made up of ex-Republicans anyway.
Corporate Democrats are just Republicans who happen to inhabit social circles where homophobia is considered distasteful.
Anecdotally, I’m seeing a lot of normie liberals get radicalized by watching Democrats approve Trump’s nominees, pass his legislation, and cave on their own government shutdowns. Turns out, if you pitch yourselves as the only opposition to fascism, people expect you to actually oppose fascism.
“We DO opposite fascism. We sent a letter about it and everything!”
- Jeffries, probably
Cnn trying to stoke fear
Well as per usual they are giant failures because they are only managing to stoke hope.
Stoke fear among the ruling class*
They want a cultural divide here so that they can send as many people who will try to stop them to the camps as possible. They know what the next steps are. Question is, do you?
Oh sorry. America is a democracy. Democrats should just listen to their base, obviously, so we can avoid further calamity. Surely that’s what will happen next. Surely.
Listen, I’m a pretty nuanced guy here in left wing politics. I believe in. Regulating capitalism, not destroying it, I don’t believe in throwing marginalized people under the bus to appeal to conservatives who never vote blue and I think we need to make sure wages go up before prices go down, iykyk.
All that said, even I’m telling you to give these DSA people a try. Will the succeed in their agenda? Probably not, you have to flip actual Republican seats to do so. But dammit they’re gonna try.
Also not a quote from this article
“Are more positive toward the Democratic Party. They are more likely to hold favorable views of the Democratic Party (68% to 60%) and its congressional leaders, and more likely to have negative views of the Republican Party and its congressional leaders”
The DSA are literally more favorable to the Democratic project than the so called “moderates”.
Will the succeed in their agenda? Probably not, you have to flip actual Republican seats to do so. But dammit they’re gonna try.
I find this attitude defeatist. A not insignificant number of people who perennially vote for Republicans are in favor of a lot of Democratic socialist ideas. The problem to surmount is the decades of propaganda making the word socialism somehow demonic and evil. There is also the unholy marriage of the Christian church and republicans. Glued mostly together by the continual fight over abortion.
I disagree heavily with the second part of your response. But to address the first part first.
No, this isn’t me being defeatist, it’s me being realistic.
If the senate is made up of 53 GOP and 47 moderate Dems. And the Dems want to pass Universal Healthcare, will it pass? NO!
If the senate is made up of 53 GOP and 47 PROGRESSIVE Dems. And the Dems want to pass Universal Healthcare, will it pass? ONCE AGAIN, NO!
It’s literally impossible to move this country left with any policy if you can’t flip Republican seats. This is a democracy, (that’s heavily rigged in favor of red states). Majorities are king. Not to defend Hakeem Jeffries, but it dosent matter if he, AOC or Karl Marx himself were speaker of the house, without a majority. You’re at the mercy of the party the American people elected over you.
I don’t know, becoming speaker of the House without a majority sounds like a pretty impressive feat. They could probably swing 3-4 votes with that kind of mojo.
Because there is no moderate position on outright fascism. Reaching across the aisle to a Nazi makes you a fucking Nazi.
But dammit they’re gonna try.
This is where the bar is set. It’s literally total fascists and people cosplaying opposition, versus people that are actually attempting to do better. It’s on the fucking floor, but after watching democrats trip over it for 40+ years, I’m way past done with that bullshit. I’m voting for the “people who are gonna try.”
The neo-Renaissance awakening is almost upon us. America’s last chance power drive for grift and glory is almost over.
Dont forget to remind everyone that the trump government decision to buy equity stakes in the private sector is literal socialism by definition. The government owns the means of production instead of private.
So when Republicans start moaning about socialism, feel free to educate them on their president who is implementing socialist policy
Government owning the means of production is only socialism if the working class controls the government, which is demonstrably not true in the slightest. Instead we have capitalists controlling the government, and when the capitalist class exerts its power over the government to directly seize more ownership of the means of production, that is fascism (or at least often a hallmark of fascism).
That’s why I used the term Socialist Policy.
But he’s not implementing socialist policy, he’s implementing fascist policy.
The government buying private equity is a socialist policy
No it isn’t. Not unless the government is controlled by the working class, which it isn’t.
The DNC wont acknowledge the dem socialists. They would rather lose. So they will lose and the voters will choose between the Republicans and the DSA, which will probably then replace the democratic party. It all hinges on whether the DSA continues to try to reform the Dems from within, which has been tried many times previously and always fails. If the DSA go their own way theres a path to the people being represented and Democratic policies sprouting anew. Otherwise fascism wins and US democracy ends. The DNC will allow democracy to end too, just very slightly slower.
It all becomes pretty clear and consistent if you look at the arc of the democratic party’s history. They have always been a sheepdog party and the voters keep pouring our hopes and dreams into them and let that define who we think they are.
The DNC is like 15 people and they have a lot less power than you’re describing.
They can fuck up the Presidential race and that’s about it. The good work, the “let’s get some D/S people elected” work all happens at the local level, the county level, and maybe the state level in a few places.
I agree that we should elect more Dem Soc everywhere, but let’s not pretend that the reason we’re not doing that is the DNC.
I respectfully disagree – A long arc of history has shown differently. If you are curious what I mean, that video makes the case. a politcial party’s leadership tier is tremendously powerful and legally independent regardless of whether its 2 people, or 15, or 5000. They decide who the candidates will be who wear their logo. They have proven in court that they can and will disregard or meddle with primary votes if they want to, or change voting rules with tools like superdelegates, at will. They are legally a private corporation who make their own rules, and the courts dont hold them to much of anything in terms of the fairness of democratic principles in their internal rules. The party leadership is the layer where the rubber meets the road – where capitalism meets with government to make sure capitalist interests are represented in candidates DNA. They will make sure a mamdani-like candidate never makes it past a primary. No amount of reform will change that.
This person doesn’t know that the neoliberals lost control of the DNC in 2024.
this person goes by what people say rather than what they actually do, which is the oldest political trick in the book.
Good.
I think a lot of people didn’t even think this was an option.
This is an excellent outcome.
I would bet that has always been the case but those feelings were suppressed.
So you’re telling me that a third of democrats now support open borders and public control of large corporations?
Probably more than that. What we’ve got is a third of democrats who would accept a DSA member implementing those policies, rather than waiting for a Hillary or Obama to get 99 1/2 votes in the Senate before passing the “Deregulate immigration slightly and maybe consider a public option for large utilities Act of 2052”
I’m not sure those are the two basic pillars of DSA. Well, in fact, they are not. But I was being polite.
Have you read Workers Deserve More? And did I say they were two basic pillars?
Turns out they always did, they just didn’t realize their views aligned that way.
Democialist Party
I just hope this doesn’t splinter the Democratic party and allow R to take the midterms, or heaven forbid 2028.
I don’t believe that’s really possible, at least not this time around. DSA is not a registered political party running candidates in races, they are running as Democrats. Meaning there might be DSA vs Dem in primary, but whoever wins that would be the Dem candidate.
How that affects voting is up for debate, but it doesn’t split the vote like running a DSA candidate against Dem and Rep candidate would.
