So it’s amazing to me that the party seems to go out of its way to find the most horrific ghouls and status quo warriors to set forth in a federal election, especially really fucking important elections
I think its useful to distinguish between Democrats and democrats. I try to use Democrats for party officials, elected officials, talking heads within the party etc. I try to use democrats for democratic voters.
Democrats do not have the priorities of their voters in mind, and have, since the 90’s, wished that they actually had republicans for voters. Democrats don’t want to be managing a leftwing party (the votership they largely have), they want to be managing a rightwing party. The Democratic party reconfigured its self to be diet Republican after Carter and have been failing forwards ever since.
I lived through all of that and you put it just right: They kept failing forward. If they weren’t the only alternative to the Republicans the party would have died after 1984.
The U.S. government was always designed so that it would be ruled by ‘the top’. Through failures of imagination, inability to build in flexibility, and the entrenched powers doing what they can to grow their power, we’ve wound up with a system where money is power and people are merely numbers that can be shuffled to produce desired end results.
I’m quickly approaching a point of throwing up my hands, but if there is a needle that can be threaded by ‘the people’ to stitch back together our fraying democracy, it’s this —
A state-by-state ballot initiative effort to remove political drawing of electoral maps.
Changing voting (likely also ballot initiative) to remove the first past the poll system, so that we use instant run-off (aka ranked choice) to give people the opportunity to vote for who they want without throwing their vote away.
Removing barriers to voting and establishing a national holiday during election days.
Overturn Citizens United. Overhaul campaign finance. Eliminate unknown funding sources from politics. Eliminate business contributions and PAC’s entirely. Narrowly define acceptable lobbying, and broadly define what lobbying can’t be.
Strong consumer privacy laws that have teeth, so that micro targeted campaigns can’t be used to manipulate people into swinging elections. Case in point - Trump only won the swing states by 11,000 votes (total) in 2016.
And using ballot initiatives to have enough states join the national popular vote interstate compact to render the electoral college moot.
Primaries. The people have to show up and actually vote for what they want into the primary (rather than trying to vote according to political strategies). With enough sustained effort and time a coalition of like-minded representatives could be built up to slowly change the system to a more representational one.
You shouldn’t. Your thinking is linear and deterministic, but elections and society structures are not. Voting for X over Y period is not a guarantee of X. It’s a chance at X, assuming an entire host of other people vote with you and a number of other factors fall into place, but not a guarantee.
Be the change you want to see friend. Organize, distribute literature, engage others in honest and open dialogue (like you’re doing), and encourage those around you to vote in every election and primary, or to run if able.
Really though, we just gotta last another 15 years or so and then the climate change feedback cycle will take care of everything
Doesn’t work in our system. To do that we’d need to use the same broken system we have to implement some other kind of voting system. But for it to work in time we would’ve had to have started in the 80s.
I suspect the DNC is gonna try another Bill Clinton style southern strategy and appeal to disenfranchised conservatives by shifting further to the right. And current democrat voters will shift to the right with them, defending their right wing actions tooth and nail.
Feelings aside, Biden is objectively one of the most, if not the most, progressive President we’ve had in modern history.
[Bernie] Sanders said that some of the early goals that the Biden administration and a Democratic Congress were able to accomplish in the first two years of Biden’s presidency were progressive victories, including the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan.
“I think the American Rescue Plan that we passed early in his agenda, in the midst of the terrible pandemic, the economic collapse, was, in fact, one of the most significant pieces of legislation for the working class in this country, in the modern history of America,” Sanders said.
No, I know who you’re responding to, but pointing out that Biden is marginally more left-leaning than the guy who repealed Glass-Steagall and the guy who created the assassination-robot squad doesn’t really undermine his point. FDR’s party gutted the New Deal, Biden being slightly more pro-union doesn’t really mean much to the overall trend.
The point being that I don’t expect inhuman levels of perfection for my political leaders, and I don’t think you should either. There was much more to FDR’s administration than the New Deal, and when it comes the historical comparison Biden may have fallen short on matching the New Deal (although objectively he passed the biggest infrastructure and progressive economics bill since the New Deal), he has an undeniably better track record than FDR in terms of human rights, civil rights and environmental protection. There’s really no comparison.
(FWIW, it’s also worth noting that FDR had a significantly stronger Democratic backing in congress, with IIRC, a large supermajority in the Senate for multiple years. Historical political context is also important.)
Like it or not, It’s just a point of fact that Biden is the most progressive president we’ve had in at least 50 years, if not a century, when looking at the entirety of his record so far.
The Day of Judgment will not come until Muslims fight the Jews, when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say, ‘O Muslim, O servant of God, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’ Only the Gharkad tree would not do that, because it is one of the trees of the Jews
I think its useful to distinguish between Democrats and democrats. I try to use Democrats for party officials, elected officials, talking heads within the party etc. I try to use democrats for democratic voters.
Democrats do not have the priorities of their voters in mind, and have, since the 90’s, wished that they actually had republicans for voters. Democrats don’t want to be managing a leftwing party (the votership they largely have), they want to be managing a rightwing party. The Democratic party reconfigured its self to be diet Republican after Carter and have been failing forwards ever since.
I lived through all of that and you put it just right: They kept failing forward. If they weren’t the only alternative to the Republicans the party would have died after 1984.
It’s probably obvious we need more choices but how?
It’s the system, honestly.
The U.S. government was always designed so that it would be ruled by ‘the top’. Through failures of imagination, inability to build in flexibility, and the entrenched powers doing what they can to grow their power, we’ve wound up with a system where money is power and people are merely numbers that can be shuffled to produce desired end results.
I’m quickly approaching a point of throwing up my hands, but if there is a needle that can be threaded by ‘the people’ to stitch back together our fraying democracy, it’s this —
A state-by-state ballot initiative effort to remove political drawing of electoral maps.
Changing voting (likely also ballot initiative) to remove the first past the poll system, so that we use instant run-off (aka ranked choice) to give people the opportunity to vote for who they want without throwing their vote away.
Removing barriers to voting and establishing a national holiday during election days.
Overturn Citizens United. Overhaul campaign finance. Eliminate unknown funding sources from politics. Eliminate business contributions and PAC’s entirely. Narrowly define acceptable lobbying, and broadly define what lobbying can’t be.
Strong consumer privacy laws that have teeth, so that micro targeted campaigns can’t be used to manipulate people into swinging elections. Case in point - Trump only won the swing states by 11,000 votes (total) in 2016.
And using ballot initiatives to have enough states join the national popular vote interstate compact to render the electoral college moot.
Primaries. The people have to show up and actually vote for what they want into the primary (rather than trying to vote according to political strategies). With enough sustained effort and time a coalition of like-minded representatives could be built up to slowly change the system to a more representational one.
I’ve been doing this for 24 years and have the “Kucinich for President” bumper sticker to prove it.
When should I expect it to start working?
Same. Tons of Bernie merch.
You won’t make it alone
You shouldn’t. Your thinking is linear and deterministic, but elections and society structures are not. Voting for X over Y period is not a guarantee of X. It’s a chance at X, assuming an entire host of other people vote with you and a number of other factors fall into place, but not a guarantee.
In other words: I am too weird to ever be satisfied with the results of an election.
Be the change you want to see friend. Organize, distribute literature, engage others in honest and open dialogue (like you’re doing), and encourage those around you to vote in every election and primary, or to run if able.
Really though, we just gotta last another 15 years or so and then the climate change feedback cycle will take care of everything
I think learning how to survive the collapse is a better use of my time at this point.
My state is one of the last to vote in primaries. Biden was the only candidate left by the time I voted in 2020.
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Vote for third parties?
Doesn’t work in our system. To do that we’d need to use the same broken system we have to implement some other kind of voting system. But for it to work in time we would’ve had to have started in the 80s.
Not necessarily:
https://www.elections.alaska.gov/RCV.php
Alaska implemented ranked choice voting after voters approved the measure in 2020
I suspect the DNC is gonna try another Bill Clinton style southern strategy and appeal to disenfranchised conservatives by shifting further to the right. And current democrat voters will shift to the right with them, defending their right wing actions tooth and nail.
Yeah, it seems with every candidate, we veer further to the right
Feelings aside, Biden is objectively one of the most, if not the most, progressive President we’ve had in modern history.
I mean, being to the left of Obama and Clinton isn’t exactly hard.
Reread the comment that I was responding to.
No, I know who you’re responding to, but pointing out that Biden is marginally more left-leaning than the guy who repealed Glass-Steagall and the guy who created the assassination-robot squad doesn’t really undermine his point. FDR’s party gutted the New Deal, Biden being slightly more pro-union doesn’t really mean much to the overall trend.
For all of his progressive economic accomplishments, FDR also interned in the Japanese and allowed for the creation of one of the world’s worst toxic waste sites.
The point being that I don’t expect inhuman levels of perfection for my political leaders, and I don’t think you should either. There was much more to FDR’s administration than the New Deal, and when it comes the historical comparison Biden may have fallen short on matching the New Deal (although objectively he passed the biggest infrastructure and progressive economics bill since the New Deal), he has an undeniably better track record than FDR in terms of human rights, civil rights and environmental protection. There’s really no comparison.
(FWIW, it’s also worth noting that FDR had a significantly stronger Democratic backing in congress, with IIRC, a large supermajority in the Senate for multiple years. Historical political context is also important.)
Like it or not, It’s just a point of fact that Biden is the most progressive president we’ve had in at least 50 years, if not a century, when looking at the entirety of his record so far.
Biden is currently supporting the Palestinian genocide as we speak.
The world’s first two-way genocide 🙄