ToastedPlanet

We're not dead yet. So we're still fighting.

“I want to do something” isn’t a policy.

When running for office, that's what a policy is.

The Democratic Party does not agree with this.

Neither do you.

Lieberman didn’t do it alone.

With only a max of 60 votes at any given time and the filibuster, he only needed one. Democrats had to get rid of the filibuster. But as institutionalists they were never planning on doing that.

I guess they thought it wouldn't be fair to do it without Republicans.

With the leverage you keep pretending we have. How do we exercise this phantom leverage? Democrats’ unwillingness to listen is how we got here.

Vote in elections for Democrats. Like we did in 2020.

Democrats don’t work around the interests of their owners. They work for them. Wealth redistribution won’t happen as long as the Democratic Party is run by corporate shit.

We need to co-opt the Democratic Party to get socialist and even progressive policies through. But even currently Democrats would have gotten more done if not for Manchin and Sinema.

And vague references to leverage that we can only somehow exercise by unquestioningly getting behind corporate shit only serves corporate shit.

Refusing to leverage power is playing right into the hands of corporate shit. The worse part is you're doing it for free. Might as well work Musk's Doge department for no pay while you're at it. He's looking for people like you.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/nov/14/elon-musk-trump

I’ve spent the past few decades wanting that party to move to the left and voting for them. They did what you wanted instead and moved to the right.

I don't want Democrats to move to the right. I want people to stop hunting for a moral victory over the Democrats. Progressives voting for them is how we get them to move to the left.

Your argument is fully a straw man now.

It will definitely lose them progressive votes. And it probably won't gain them many conservative votes. But the Democrats are still going to try anyway. They look at who voted and chase those people's votes. edit: typo

Most of the country wants a new party, but our FPTP system mathematically guarantees they will never get it.

lol

=/

Trump's populism is christian nationalism. Specifically white christian nationalism. So it's not going to look Bernie's populism. And those do whistles are, or at least were before they became so overt, dog whistles.

It’s fatalism.

My point here is, “The system that only allows for getting worse will never get better.”

Years of US history demonstrate that is not the case. People have demonstrated it is possible to make things better with our democracy. Women's suffrage and the civil rights movement happened in the US in the 20th century.

Things have been getting worse since Reagan brought neoliberalism to the mainstream. The US wasn't perfect. And on some social issues like gay marriage things have gotten better. But we are where we are now thanks to over forty years of neoliberism allowing the rich to extract wealth from everyone else. We have entered the billionaires forming an oligarchy around a dictator stage of late-stage capitalism.

Without industrializing the North could have lost the war to the South as they would have been more evenly matched. The North needed to win the political battle, the war, and then after the war, the culture war. They won the first two, but we are still fighting the culture war.

Fixed. Thanks.

I live in the US where fascists have put targets on the backs of trans people.

The same fascists have also pledged to let Israel finish their genocide. Weird you don't care about that.

https://www.project2025.org/

https://www.25and.me/?topics

It's not enough. The House elections happen every two years. AIPAC can successfully primary progressive politicians if we don't vote for them.

https://apnews.com/article/squad-aipac-progressives-congress-cori-bush-0de0a96929368db72145b033261415ca

Murphy spells it out. Democrats are moving to the right to get people who aren't 100% with them on social and cultural issues. There is a huge base of people in the US that support Israel. And they tend to be consistent older voters.

https://apnews.com/article/squad-aipac-progressives-congress-cori-bush-0de0a96929368db72145b033261415ca

https://money.usnews.com/money/retirement/aging/articles/why-older-citizens-are-more-likely-to-vote

https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform/

Trump ran on a populist platform that wasn't limited to economic populism. Harris didn't have any compelling narrative whatsoever.

It’s the electorate stupid!

It's worth while for the electorate to learn the right lessons. Otherwise there wouldn't be people in this comment section trying to get everyone to learn the wrong lessons.

Why must one of those parties be the Democrats? I don’t see no fucking Whigs around, do you?

Because unlike the Wigs, the Democrats are not divided over slavery. They can just move to the right on contemporary issues as Chris Murphy details here.

https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/18581056/11578151