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claim 1: “voting doesn’t change anything”
Never forget the recent case of Kris Mayes, who refuses to uphold the Arizona supreme court’s sweeping ban of abortion.
Kris Mayes only won her 2022 election by 280 votes. Voting changes things.
claim 2: “but genocide joe”
Yep. Hold that fucker’s feet to the fire. He has blood on his hands
But trump has promised to be indisputably worse. I won’t tell you how to vote. I just encourage you to vote. You’re not radical for ditching the only miniscule right the state has granted you to do some small aid for your neighbors.
Beyond regularly voting in solidarity. We need to start running these younger better candidates ourselves. Republicans run unopposed in many places on state ballots. And Democrats have spent roughly the last decade ignoring these positions. We might not win all or even a large chunk of them. But we could by accident when a few and start building new coalitions from there. Making inroads into places that had given up on getting better. Voting is only the first step.
Michelle Vallejo is 32. Democrats cut her funding in her election against Monica De La Cruz in the crucial last month, during an election cycle in which the party did ad buys for MAGA candidates.
Younger, better candidates run. Party leadership prefers a maga chud to a progressive in any given position.
Vallejo is running again. I hope she has alternate funding this time.
Yeah, that's the real issue here: neoliberals are more comfortable with fascism than progressivism or socialism, but most of the younger generation is (justifiably) disillusioned with liberalism, so of course the neoliberals Democratic Party is having a hard time finding candidates it wants to support.
The solution, of course, is to kick out the fucking neolibs that have a stranglehold on the party, but that's easier said than done.
Very much so. It's why I only donate to candidates and never the party. I only trust the party to spend it on ads for maga chuds.
That will never happen if neo libs can support a genocide and still be voted in. Why would they change if they can support a genocide and still win?
Here's the problem -- if that happens, conservative fascists can support genocides and still be voted in. In addition to all of their other appalling beliefs. And the thing is, when Republicans win, they swing the entire country to the right. It's happened every time since Obama.
Consider too, what happened in 2020 after Clinton lost in 2016? Did the party swing hard left? Not at all. Bernie's team helped adjust the rules for the primary to be fairer and did away with superdelegates. Still, in a head to head against Biden, he couldn't win. And all primaries eventually winnow down to 2-3 candidates. In a ranked choice primary, Bernie wouldn't have won even if everyone stayed in the whole time.
To swing left, you have to build continuously and gradually.
The party leadership is allowed to decide where their funding will go and where it won't. And them not putting it towards a particular candidate does not mean they support the opposition. That they gave her funding in the first place even points to the opposite of that. And your conclusion is extremely disingenuous.
Make no mistake I have no love for neoliberals, democrats, or the party leadership. And it's great that this one person ran. But up and down the ballot in my state and city there are Republicans running unopposed. We need to be able to point to many more than one single instance. And as you said we need to be prepared to help with alternate funding. Because the Democratic party cannot be relied on to any grrat extent. Which is the whole point of us getting people younger and better to run ourselves and not waiting for them to do it. Because we know their judgment is flawed. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make but you only really supported my point.
The Democratic Party gets to choose, and they consistantly choose conservatives over progressives.
We, the voters, dont get to choose. We are forced to Vote Blue No Matter Who.
That's why it's equally as important as voting. To replace the candidates the current Democratic batch prefer and fun with ones that we prefer. If we do it and keep at it eventually enough of the establishment will be replaced that they will have to rely on the support of the candidates we like. Who will then move up in the party ranks till eventually they're in control of the party. Need to remind you that in the middle of the 20th century the Democratic Party was a fairly large League bigoted racist party. The Republican party was and still is. But the point is the Democrats changed. And they can be changed again. But we need to push candidates on them.
That's something that really hasn't been done in the last half century.
What do you mean it hasn't been done? There have been many progressive challengers to DNC-backed neoliberals. I can tell you about my experience volunteering for a few of these campaigns and all the structural hurdles the DNC uses to crush the progressive wing of the party.
But I think the bigger issue is urgency. We can't afford to wait a generation before taking serious action on climate change. Our current path leads directly to the end of human civilization.
And for the families in North Gaza eating grass to survive, they cannot wait until the next election cycle.
There are vasts swaths of offices here in red states where republicans run unopposed. Yeah if you primary democrats chosen candidates they will do everything they can to support them. To counter that. You need good name recognition, reputation and pedigree. From holding these lower often seen as less important offices democrats ignore and progressive candidates don't run for.
The problem is everyone tends to try to primary for higher level offices. Federal level etc. And that's the problem. Replace the base and the top will eventually follow. Go for the empty offices. I vote on almost every ballot that comes up here. I leave a bunch of it blank because my only options are open republican fascists or closeted right wing libertarian fascists. I would love to see DSA candidates, green Party Candidates etc. I'm happy you're primarying them for some of the few offices they decide to pursue. That is unfortunately largely a waste of resources and effort. But still important. But there are thousands of offices they don't run for actively. That instead of clashing with a chosen candidate and causing both parties to waste more resources. Could probably find you being amicably supported by the larger party for having the initiative.
From my experience the problem isn't reputation or pedigree, its DNC-created problems. Progressive challengers have a hard time doing basic things like printing flyers, because print shops know that if they work with a progressive challenger once theny they end up on the DNC blacklist. Its official DNC policy and it's super effective.
I too would love to see more DSA backed candidates running for lower offices, but from what I've seen it's not a question of tactics, it's a question of resources. Most modern politics is funded by corporate donors, and since the DSA does not accept this corruption, they simply dont have the money to run a candidate for dogcatcher in your flyover town.
Where I live in a populous blue state, there is no such thing as a republican running unopposed. If that's different where you live, then you should sign up to be the next DSA candidate running for one of those seats.
No one is forcing you to vote blue no matter who. Democracy is withholding your vote if your voice isn't being heard.
Maybe I'm an idealist, but I think democracy is when your views are represented and government is responsive to the needs of the people.
"Democracy is when you don't vote" just doesn't make sense to me.
And they decided to spend their money on ad buys for maga candidates and to pull the rug out from under progressives. Which is why the party can get all the way fucked when it asks for my money. They'll just waste it on maga chuds.
Their funding of the opposition indicates that.
Yeah, she makes a great object lesson for what happens when you run and aren't MAGA-adjacent enough for the party's liking.
Wonder if that has anything to do with progressives not being able to count on support of the Democratic Party.
Their judgement is sound; they just prefer maga candidates to progressives.
There's no proof of that. That is a hyperbolic and absurd claim. Have they strategically propped up and pushed for bad Republican candidates before? Yes. Not because they support them. But because they are generally so weak they think it's some sort of viable strategy to defeat Republicans. It's backfired soundly on them and they haven't learned. Claiming that they actually "support" them is absurd however. You're literally claiming that they wanted Trump to win in 2016 over hillary. Because they prompt him up early on. When clearly that isn't the case.
No. It's another bad Democrat strategy where they focus almost solely on the national level. And largely ignore state offices and legislatures. Its been that way at least 20 years. If you're old enough to remember.
No. It's still an absurd, hyperbolic, and unsupported claim. I'm not arguing that the Democrat leadership hasn't behaved stupidly. There's more evidence that they have than of most other things in life. But they're not trying to get the magats in office. They've always intended to beat them. But the morons legitimately don't know how to do that reliably.
We're looking at the same set of events. You're calling it incompetence. I'm calling it malice. If it were just incompetence, you'd think at least once the party would bumble into looking like they had their thumbs on the scale for progressives.
They have multiple times. Whether it's the chips act, the NLRB decision or some of the more recent ones. Some of the stuff in this list is pretty specious but it's a pretty decent list. And it's not as long as it should be. But it's definitely not nothing.
Democrats are absolutely incompetent. There's no question. But if you think they're actively pushing to get magats elected. You make the people thinking there was a child sex dungeon in the basement of a pizza parlor with no basement seem slightly more sane.
Oh cool. The list that counts changing the color scheme on a plane as an accomplishment.
They're paying for their ads and starving progressives of funds.
I literally told you that some of them weren't really valid. And that's your best reply. The Chips act, NLRB decision, the debt relief, and recent FTC decisions. They're HUGE. And the fact you can't engage and act maturely like an adult. Just shows how disingenuous you're being.
And? Lay out the conspiracy gymnastics to go from that to literally supporting Republican candidates with intent of getting them elected. Is this being orchestrated by the Bilderbergs, the lizard people, maybe the greys? Never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained with incompetence. Though in your case it may be both.
You want me to prove intent?
I do not believe that this can be adequately explained by incompetence. Democrats' "incompetence" only benefits candidates to the right of progressives.
That's a consequence of a century of encroaching fascism and heavy right-wing framing. From the 1950s Red Scare all the way through today. Including Reagan's terrorist assaults. It's easily explained by Propaganda and incompetence.
You're young passionate and uninformed. I'm not going to hold that against you. Because that's how we all tend to start out. And the first two are solid assets. However a failure to engage with the facts. An employee reasoning and understanding to learn. Could be something that people will hold against you in the future.
Take it from someone who's old enough to remember when drills telling you to hide under your desk to Shield you from an atomic blast were commonplace. Ignorance, incompetence and propaganda ran rampant. And you aren't immune.
So I guessed right when I guessed boomer. As though the condescension wasn't a dead giveaway.
Wrong as always. And I gave you more complements ironically than criticism or condescension. But you gotta be you. And you gotta be the victim just like the Magats. GL with that.
You support the party because it opposes progressives.