“This is a collapse of the Democratic Party.” Consumer advocate, corporate critic and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader comments on the reelection of Donald Trump and the failures of the Democratic challenge against him.
Despite attempts by left-wing segments of the Democratic base to shift the party’s messaging toward populist, anti-corporate and progressive policies, says Nader, Democrats “didn’t listen.” Under Trump, continues Nader, “We’re in for huge turmoil.”
Move on from the Democrats. It’s over. They had their chance with Bernie.
After this term Trump cannot be reelected. What will the democratic message be then? Who will be the new boogie man?
The Democratic Party will never change on its own. It is run by neoliberals. Neoliberals are moderate conservatives. They will always shift a little right before shifting a little left.
If the Party is not overtaken by progressives, we will repeat all this bullshit again and again until only far right people remain.
The party needs to be taken over by leftists not progressives. It needs leadership who isn’t afraid of being titled left, those who reject the right as an outward identity.
My concern is numbers. The party needs to appeal to enough people to be successful. The public understands “progress” and “progressive”. The public requires quite a bit of education on “leftist” to be sold. I think this would be the difference between success and failed obscurity.
You sure about that?
To be fair, before Trump took over the party, the Republicans were generally considered to be in a death spiral.
The prevailing idea was that the party just didn’t have a future. Their brand was this basically an unappealing mix of boring religious people and self-professed ‘sensible’, common-sense stewards of the status quo. Looking at demographic trends at the time, they were trending towards irrelevance.
Then Trump took over and brought back the enthusiasm. They also started to court minority votes (Hispanics, Blacks) which tend to be very socially conservative. At the same time, the democrats slipped into the ‘boring status quo protectors’ role.
Hopefully the Dems wake up, but it might take a while.
Everyone needs to take their anger straight to their local DNC office. Get involved and stop letting the centrist status-quo motherfuckers steer the party from the local levels. I’m also a member of my nearest DSA group but, until there’s a viable option for third parties to complete in general elections, we need to hold our noses and trojan horse the Democrats to change them from within.