Democratic Socialist need to act as their own party. The Democratic National Convention (DNC) does not represent our interest.
After decades of sliding right, We finally have a chance to shift that Overton window slightly to the left and people are second guessing it?
I thought this too, but they can’t act as spoilers. Democratic Socialists need to beat Centrists in the primaries. Otherwise you throw more elections to the conservatives.
It’s about fucking time people start realizing this
For at least the last 45 years, Republicans have cast every Democrat politician as a Socialist or extreme leftist. No matter how left, center, or middle they are, Republicans always say they’re far left. So why the hell would you move to the right just because you’re afraid they’re going to call you names? Everyone knows that no matter how far to the right you move, they’re still going to scream that you’re the most extreme liberal who has ever run for office?
The truth is, the neoliberals have an uphill battle against populist conservative Republicans. Socialists might have an advantage.
I should probably expand on this. Neoliberals have a hard time driving voter turnout because it’s the same people who vote for them who also decided that maybe something more conservative would be better, as the neoliberal agenda has spent 30 years not living up to its promises.
But progressive socialist liberalism is ALSO about change, and is driven by people who are passionate about placing that change in the hands of regular people.
So it can absorb some of the people who voted for Republicans because they weren’t neoliberal, and also rouse the large body of non voters to actually get out and vote. That’s a much larger voting bloc than the neoliberals have available; it’s just a much poorer one.
Conservative populists and neoliberals like to trot out “left” vs “right” to make it seem like politics is on a single line and you can trend more one way or the other. But in reality, often voting for change means voting for the change that seems most achievable, and there’s no left vs right about that.
Fried has such a chance to be cool about this, actually prove the dem party is a big tent, and put the country and party ahead of their personal politics. Nixon won over vindman signficantly, it wasnt neck and neck, the people that make up the party want a dsa aligned person more than a trump-focused centrist - the democratic party is what if not a democracy that at least reflects the will of its own members?
Maybe she should drop the DSA talks and bring Dick Cheney on the campaign trailer. Or, I don’t know, give “policies that benefit people” a chance.
