I'm not advocating overthrowing the system

That's not quite what I'm getting at either. It's the threat of bringing dems out of power that, if we successfully carry through, has a real chance at degrading our democracy. Just like it did last time republicans took power.

But the threat of Republicans taking power is necessary to spur change from democrats. If we vote blue no matter what every single time, there won't be a platform change because democrats will do what they've been doing for the last two decades and assume the fear of Republicans is enough to get them elected.

So how do we spur democrats to change without giving republicans an open door to waltz in?

if it's true and the democrats know this, then they need to be taking more action against it than just running it as a campaign message

Democrats have lost their teeth. They won't actually do something about it because they're afraid of that Republicans will use whatever is done for retaliation, which they will.

As an aside, I live in Louisiana where the governor's seat turned red for the first time in 8 years. The blue governor was a good temper against the crazier laws our supermajority red congress tried passing.

Now that there's no obstacle, our red congress is revenge passing everything they can to take marginalized groups' rights away and now they're talking about rewriting the state constitution to allow for even more restrictive laws.

And they're doing it to spite democrats who've stopped them for almost a decade.

All this to say that democrats don't do enough where it matters because they have to keep a base happy that actually judges them on their actions. Republicans' conservative base eats up rage bait and cheers for suffering, so they always have the upper hand in that arena.

I think liberals tend to miss-identify the threat of fascism within their own party, and I think it's definitely present now

Oh absolutely. I mean, democrats are responding to nationwide protests by making it a form of hate speech. We're there.

I hope you're right about young people being willing to organize despite the system, because it's gonna be rough if the worst happens in November.