Thats more of a step 2 or 3. Step 1 is that everybody needs to start putting pressure on the DNC and make sure they understand that we’re not going to take it anymore. And I’m not referring to that bullshit “not voting” rhetoric, because not voting is tantamount to voting republican.
Once the DNC is forced to listen to us plebs again, then it’ll be a good time to look at breaking out into more parties. But we need to put the fear of whomever they pray to in them first.
The reality of American political process is that it takes at least a billion dollars to run a Presidential campaign. (Thanks, SCOTUS) That kind of money doesn’t come from unions, social activists, or proletariat donors. It comes from corporations and billionaires, and those people don’t like revolution.
Until someone can demonstrate that you can get more votes with progressive, worker-friendly policy proposals than with a well funded propaganda machine, the DNC is going to keep chasing the less conservative billionaires. And no third party will even be relevant.
I mean we very obviously do. We have two corporate oligarch parties, but I would much rather have the tech billionaire club that brought us the Gates foundation or the Allen institute and isn’t actively trying to kill a large portion of the country than the one that sees what Israel is doing to Palestine as a good model of how to clean up the riffraff
No. We have a viable party that chases billionaires with credibility behind it, and the Democratic Party that chases billionaires while pretending that they are for working people, and kills their own viability because they have no credibility with either group.
As long as they chase billionaires, Democrats are not a viable second party. From a functional standpoint, we have only one party.
The thing is, a message that’s simple, resonates, and allows people to blame others will always win out over a message calling people to pull their own weight and do the complicated but correct things.
Idk, Harris vastly outraised Trump (over $1B in 3 months) and it… didn’t move the needle.
Progressives need to distill their ideas down into smart, easily repeated ideas (Billionaire bad, union good) that can spread via social media, aren’t inflammatory (defund the police, etc), and aren’t based on fear and loathing but rather a message of hope.
Money doesn’t win the election, it’s more of an entrance fee, and campaign financing is more complicated than just ‘the campaign.’ You have to account for PACs, party, and all the free messaging from sympathetic media outlets. Bernie pinned his hopes on going viral on social media, and mostly demonstrated that it’s not a viable strategy, at least at the Presidential level. Might work OK for smaller races, like AOC, in a geographically small, relatively young district, but not nationally. Most people actively avoid political messaging, which is a fundamental problem if you plan to rely on organic distribution of a political message through social media. Especially social media controlled by billionaires that might be hostile to messages like ‘billionaires bad, unions good.’
We certainly agree on the broad strokes. I think part of the allure of the MAGA messaging was that it was often shared by a highly approachable racist that people were already comfortable with, so the political bits could just sorta be sprinkled in as needed alongside other ideas that people already agreed with.
If they really cared about “country over party” they’d vehemently support ranked choice voting at all levels of government and an end to gerrymandering. Even though the Democrats aren’t really extremists our political system will continue to prop up extreme views if everything is identity politics and there are only two you can choose from.
The dnc is never going to listen to the plebs because they only answer the money, and we don’t have it. As long as people keep participating in their game of electoral politics, nothing will change. Let them lose several elections in a row, and maybe they’ll see the light or fade off into obscurity, which is the preferred method.
Look, I’m right there with you and this defeatist feeling. You and me by ourselves can’t do shit. But guess what? There’s millions of us. And for decades it’s been beaten into our heads that we are powerless; that we are nothing because we are not rich.
There was a time where there was a group of people who were treated far worse than we’re being treated now. They had so much less than us, and got treated so much worse than us. Yet somehow, they fought back. And while they’re still fighting, they’ve made huge inroads with the status quo that it’s left its mark for the rest of time.
If they can do that, then the least we can do is scare the shit out of a bunch of idjits at the DNC.
I’m not feeling defeatist, things turned out exactly as I expected them too. And liberals punching left instead of right is also what I expected. The DNC can fall off the face of the earth and I would be ok with that. There’s only room for 1 right wing party in the country.
Yup. Call your Senators and tell them you have no faith in the party leadership, and that Chuck Shcumer cannot continue as Senate Minority Leader. If they’re up for reelection in the next two years, tell them you’re happy to support a primary challenger if it’s the only way to get change.
You know you can do more than pressure them, right? You can get involved with your state party, which in turn elects the leaders of the national party. You can vote in the primaries and kick out corporate Dems. We know this works because it’s precisely how the fascists took over the Republican party.
Unfortunately, Bernie will not be the one to lead that. Social Democrats fundamentally have to side with and cater to the bourgeoisie as they depend on Capitalism, unless you mean to advocate for a real revolutionary Socialist party. In the latter case, PSL already exists, and the DSA has powerful Marxist caucuses like Red Star and MUG that are close to gaining over 50% control of the party. I wrote an introductory reading list for Marxism if that appeals to you or anyone else.
Do a hostile takeover of the GOP instead. Many states don’t care why party you register as, and if they do just register as a Republican and vote in their primaries. Pick a socialist candidate and get them to run as a Republican, and vote for them. This is in essence what Trump did, but of course he did it for fascism and got Nazis to vote Republican. The same strategy can work for anyone else. This can start in safe blue states where no one votes in the GOP primaries and spread from there.
This is a far more realistic strategy because third parties are vulnerable to the spoiler effect and will always fail due to people being worried about electing Republicans.
You are aware of first past the post right? That really needs to be the first thing on your agenda to get fixed. Until then, the USA will ALWAYS be a two-party system (with brief blips in change over).
Form your own party. Dump the useless liberals. Reconstitute the SPA and team up with the unions.
Thats more of a step 2 or 3. Step 1 is that everybody needs to start putting pressure on the DNC and make sure they understand that we’re not going to take it anymore. And I’m not referring to that bullshit “not voting” rhetoric, because not voting is tantamount to voting republican.
Once the DNC is forced to listen to us plebs again, then it’ll be a good time to look at breaking out into more parties. But we need to put the fear of whomever they pray to in them first.
The reality of American political process is that it takes at least a billion dollars to run a Presidential campaign. (Thanks, SCOTUS) That kind of money doesn’t come from unions, social activists, or proletariat donors. It comes from corporations and billionaires, and those people don’t like revolution.
Until someone can demonstrate that you can get more votes with progressive, worker-friendly policy proposals than with a well funded propaganda machine, the DNC is going to keep chasing the less conservative billionaires. And no third party will even be relevant.
As long as the DNC is chasing billionaires, we have no second party.
I mean we very obviously do. We have two corporate oligarch parties, but I would much rather have the tech billionaire club that brought us the Gates foundation or the Allen institute and isn’t actively trying to kill a large portion of the country than the one that sees what Israel is doing to Palestine as a good model of how to clean up the riffraff
No. We have a viable party that chases billionaires with credibility behind it, and the Democratic Party that chases billionaires while pretending that they are for working people, and kills their own viability because they have no credibility with either group.
As long as they chase billionaires, Democrats are not a viable second party. From a functional standpoint, we have only one party.
Does viable have a different definition for you that doesn’t include winning roughly half of elections?
The thing is, a message that’s simple, resonates, and allows people to blame others will always win out over a message calling people to pull their own weight and do the complicated but correct things.
Idk, Harris vastly outraised Trump (over $1B in 3 months) and it… didn’t move the needle.
Progressives need to distill their ideas down into smart, easily repeated ideas (Billionaire bad, union good) that can spread via social media, aren’t inflammatory (defund the police, etc), and aren’t based on fear and loathing but rather a message of hope.
Money doesn’t win the election, it’s more of an entrance fee, and campaign financing is more complicated than just ‘the campaign.’ You have to account for PACs, party, and all the free messaging from sympathetic media outlets. Bernie pinned his hopes on going viral on social media, and mostly demonstrated that it’s not a viable strategy, at least at the Presidential level. Might work OK for smaller races, like AOC, in a geographically small, relatively young district, but not nationally. Most people actively avoid political messaging, which is a fundamental problem if you plan to rely on organic distribution of a political message through social media. Especially social media controlled by billionaires that might be hostile to messages like ‘billionaires bad, unions good.’
We certainly agree on the broad strokes. I think part of the allure of the MAGA messaging was that it was often shared by a highly approachable racist that people were already comfortable with, so the political bits could just sorta be sprinkled in as needed alongside other ideas that people already agreed with.
No, it takes a billion dollars to lose an election. Trump could of ran on a shoestring budget and he still would of won.
If they really cared about “country over party” they’d vehemently support ranked choice voting at all levels of government and an end to gerrymandering. Even though the Democrats aren’t really extremists our political system will continue to prop up extreme views if everything is identity politics and there are only two you can choose from.
The dnc is never going to listen to the plebs because they only answer the money, and we don’t have it. As long as people keep participating in their game of electoral politics, nothing will change. Let them lose several elections in a row, and maybe they’ll see the light or fade off into obscurity, which is the preferred method.
Doubt we have two or three elections left in us.
Look, I’m right there with you and this defeatist feeling. You and me by ourselves can’t do shit. But guess what? There’s millions of us. And for decades it’s been beaten into our heads that we are powerless; that we are nothing because we are not rich.
There was a time where there was a group of people who were treated far worse than we’re being treated now. They had so much less than us, and got treated so much worse than us. Yet somehow, they fought back. And while they’re still fighting, they’ve made huge inroads with the status quo that it’s left its mark for the rest of time.
If they can do that, then the least we can do is scare the shit out of a bunch of idjits at the DNC.
I’m not feeling defeatist, things turned out exactly as I expected them too. And liberals punching left instead of right is also what I expected. The DNC can fall off the face of the earth and I would be ok with that. There’s only room for 1 right wing party in the country.
That’s what they did this election, and we got fascism and the DNC doesn’t matter anymore. So now what?
Yup. Call your Senators and tell them you have no faith in the party leadership, and that Chuck Shcumer cannot continue as Senate Minority Leader. If they’re up for reelection in the next two years, tell them you’re happy to support a primary challenger if it’s the only way to get change.
You know you can do more than pressure them, right? You can get involved with your state party, which in turn elects the leaders of the national party. You can vote in the primaries and kick out corporate Dems. We know this works because it’s precisely how the fascists took over the Republican party.
Why don’t we simply kill the DNC instead. And the RNC. Seems easier that way. And no I don’t mean mentally.
Yeah, because that ever works.
Revolution does work, historically, but the US needs more class awareness and working class militancy for that to be viable.
Yeah how’s that voting blue no matter who working for you? You still ended up with trump.
"Form your own party. "
Good luck with getting ballot access.
But no need to start from scratch - here’s a list of political parties in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_the_United_States
Unfortunately, Bernie will not be the one to lead that. Social Democrats fundamentally have to side with and cater to the bourgeoisie as they depend on Capitalism, unless you mean to advocate for a real revolutionary Socialist party. In the latter case, PSL already exists, and the DSA has powerful Marxist caucuses like Red Star and MUG that are close to gaining over 50% control of the party. I wrote an introductory reading list for Marxism if that appeals to you or anyone else.
Do a hostile takeover of the GOP instead. Many states don’t care why party you register as, and if they do just register as a Republican and vote in their primaries. Pick a socialist candidate and get them to run as a Republican, and vote for them. This is in essence what Trump did, but of course he did it for fascism and got Nazis to vote Republican. The same strategy can work for anyone else. This can start in safe blue states where no one votes in the GOP primaries and spread from there.
This is a far more realistic strategy because third parties are vulnerable to the spoiler effect and will always fail due to people being worried about electing Republicans.
You are aware of first past the post right? That really needs to be the first thing on your agenda to get fixed. Until then, the USA will ALWAYS be a two-party system (with brief blips in change over).
Correct, but it need not be these two parties.