I have said this elsewhere, but i will not again vote for the Democratic Party until they actually put up progressive candidates. Not pinky swear to pass progressive policy. That means the candidates has to have a provable history of struggling against the Democratic Party to pass progressive policy. There are only two i know of and that’s Bernie Sanders (who is too old for the presidency), and AOC. Else it’s third party until the democrats learn better.
I hope she actually changes things and doesn’t go down the path the likes of genocide joe and grifting to say things will change when they won’t
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Other democrats simply have not been pushing back on the Republicans in the way that she has, and it’s fucking baffling.
It’s a lot less baffling if you consider the possibility that they never believed any of the shit they said about Trump being a threat to democracy, or if they did that part doesn’t bother them. It was Theater Time during the election and now it’s Cooperation Time, and actually you’re the extreme one for not just seamlessly switching modes!
and she is old enough for presidential nomination now. do it, aoc.
The US is simply too misogynistic to elect a woman as president, especially a woman of color.
The unfortunate reality is that our best bet for the White House is a progressive white man with AOC as VP.
I believe that even AOC knows this.
You can’t say that because there is no reliable data to go off of. Kamala and Clinton were terrible candidates.
You think we’re still doing elections? I cherish your optimism
Hey now there will for sure be “elections”, they’ll just be 100% kayfabe instead of just 50-75% kayfabe
when will the heels get magic chokeslammed through a steel table 😔
When we get the real-life political equivalent of Stone Cold… Ironically the most popular wrestler per event in history who’s whole gimmick was fighting the authority of the wrestling promoter who didn’t believe he was an acceptable face of the company and constantly wanted to push their own handpicked corporate champions. It’s actually a lot more spot on than I meant it to be…
You will get Kamala or Gavin and you will like your Trump 3rd term. - Dems
🎵it’s sad, but true🎵
I don’t think that’s true tbh. The Dems have never managed to nominate a popular woman as their presidential candidate before. Clinton was almost universally disliked by the public (for lots of good reasons other than her gender), and ex-prosecutor Harris’s campaign was hamstrung by Biden, as well as being seen as an other pro-corporate Democrat stooge. AOC might actually have a fighting chance compared to her predecessors. But she’ll never be able to be the Democratic candidate until the old guard of leadership is replaced, let’s face facts.
All the rest have their noses in donors assess rn. We can’t even see their faces!
What’s Elizabeth Warren been up to lately? That’s who I’d vote for of I were American.
She’s been busy shouting about all the wrong parts of crypto to regulate and then not doing anything about any of it.
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Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) placed third in the survey with 8%.
I like Miss Crockett. She’s impressed me over the last couple of years.
“And it’s not even close”
She’s in a statistical tie with “nobody”.
I dont think the electoral system allows for this “nobody” person to win. Maybe someone can change their legal name to “nobody”.
She’s not the face of the Democratic Party
She’s the face of a completely new and different party that has nothing to do with old Democrats.
To me, I’ve been viewing the US as being governed under a one party state for a while … the Republicans and the Democrats form two halves of the same organization.
The US doesn’t need a third party
They need to form a new second opposition party because the old one morphed into the monstrous thing we have today.
Any time someone can’t tell the difference between centrists and fascists, I just have to assume that their stance is more about arguing than it is about a sincerely held ideology.
The Democratic Party is just a vessel. It used to be the right wing (relative). Now it’s the left wing (relative). Bernie and AOC don’t really fit in with the Dems, but they can. Same with Manchin.
There was a time where I thought a Musk type could rally many behind a weird Libertarian version of the DNC or RNC and shift the landscape. But he just went hard fascist as soon as he publicly aligned with the right.
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Or put another way, it’s time for the non-fascist party to realign ideologically as part of the Seventh Party Era
The US needs a third, a fourth, a fifth and several more parties as viable alternatives.
They to drop any weird FPTP systems, this will allow new parties to come into play.
This would also end the ridiculous gerrymandering shit
Yeah, no.
If no party can get to 270 electoral votes, the president is picked by the House of Representatives.
That means congress would need be flippped into third party majority first.
Splitting the left off only benefits the far right. Anyone who thinks otherwise is stuck in an echo chamber.
This is why stoy said the First Past the Post system needs to be dropped.
Which would require a constitutional amendment, meaning it’s a pipe dream.
Omg, I love you. I’ve been screaming this since CGPGrey’s videos about voting and alternatives to what we have. Getting that is gonna require all existing party members to be cool with a complete loss of power and an increase in the amount of work the have to do to keep their power or get elected.
It’ll take the states. However, there are already states trying to ban alternative voting methods.
Haha, thank you for your kind words!
As a Swede, the US election system has always seemed so backwards, even the fact that you have to register to vote is completely foreign to me.
And there’s no chance it can get one while $ is in American politics.
Pretty much, yeah.
Taking over the Democratic Party vs starting a new party is kinda like addressing climate change on Earth vs terraforming Mars.
The former sounds painful and bureaucratic while the latter sounds exciting and innovative.
But if you can’t fix the party or planet you’ve got, which has like 80% of the hard work done already, what hope do you have of doing a new thing from scratch?
One of the criticisms against the Democratic Party is that they aren’t particularly democratic. Party insiders and the wealthy hold far more power and practically pick the nominees.
Rather than compare them to the planet from which we were birthed, I would compare them to a shitty boyfriend we’re afraid to dump.
Fuck that.
Centrists/Republcian Lites don’t deserve to the party.
They are free to fight republicans over control of that shitshow.
Weird. The party that claims to be “for the people” keeps putting centrists in charge. We’re ready for someone who is actually for the people!
Controlled opposition
Buzzword catchphrase
It all makes sense when you realize who makes the cutoff for what they consider “people.”
Conservatives, they are putting conservatives in charge. Don’t be fooled by how republicans label themselves. They haven’t been conservative since before the turn of the century.
It’s DNC leadership that has taken up that mantle.
Quickest way to mobilize the Democratic party is to threaten to put a progressive in charge
they’d rather lose to Trump for a third term than do that.
They learned their lesson with Obama. The funny thing is he’s not even a fucking leftist, the party is just so full of dinosaurs they think a modern centrist is a leftist.
The dinosaurs know they’re marching right, that’s where all the money is (for them).
I’m a European born American. Obama would be right wing politician in my country of birth.
With Obama they just learned how to take a somewhat progressive candidates and bend them into a moderate. It’s the same thing that happened with Kamala, although of course it’s hard to say if either were ever really progressive or if they just used that for votes and didn’t mind discarding it once they got pressured by the party and consultants.
Kamala was never progressive.
In general, no. In terms of specific policies as an AG, there were some.
I’d say she’s a centrist, with some progressive policies and some regressive. Just my opinion obviously.
Yeah I definitely agree, both Kamala and Obama are candidates that acted progressive in their primaries but as soon as they eventually got the nomination they went towards the corporate Democrat establishment. My main question is whether they were progressive at some point but let themselves be changed by the establishment, consultants, and donors or if they never really cared that much to begin with. The end state is the same but the difference is important as it gives us insight into how much power the consultants and others have over candidates vs if they didn’t really care then it wouldn’t have taken much to change them.
Kamala was picked as VP because Dems thought she would get votes from the republicans who aren’t so MAGA. She’s on the conservative side of things: tough on crime as AG, opposed cannabis legalization (changed position later), opposed abolition of death penalty (flipped later), etc.
I’m not even sure it was as deep as that, IMO they shoo’d her in without any chalengers as she could legally use the Biden-Harris
bribesdonations they had already collected. Thats about the extent of their thinking.Forgot hard on incarcerated trans women…
Neither was Obama. Not long after he put a bow on the nomination, he voted for an expansive security bill. A lot of people were surprised, but not me.
plus his voting record pre-presidency was very conservative. they fabricated his progressive persona
Obama wasn’t even somewhat progressive before the Democratic Party. He was against gay marriage for a while.
See David Hogg
See Bernie Sanders.
They’re definitely for the billionaire people.
Aren’t there primaries for the Dems?
Sort of, sometimes. They can and will heavily disadvantage candidates they dont like. Like when they gave Hillary the questions for debates beforehand but not to Bernie, and let hillary control the funding of races, including her own. And like when they cut new hampshire out of the primary results this year because the New Hampshire dems wouldnt move the date for the primary to when the dnc wanted. So sure you could vote in that primary, but nothing was done with the results. Straight to the garbage can with those ballots.
Russia says they have a democracy too, with votes and everything. Not saying we’re the same, but proving we have “democracy” by the fact that voting happens is not that firm of a thing. Its easily corrupted.
Voter turnout in primaries is pathetic. In 30 states, you have to be registered with the party - i.e.: give them your name and address for fund-raising purposes - to vote. This all works to bias primaries to ‘establishment’ candidates, or at least people well known among party apparatchiks. They are, theoretically, the best way to get progressives or populists into office, but practically, those progressives are fighting demographics and the general apathy of voters under 40.
The same phenomena that let MAGA take over the GOP keep the moderates in charge of the Dems. At least, until someone figures out how to motivate all the young internet revolutionaries to actually go and vote instead of memeing about how useless voting is.
You’re blaming the DNC for something that is controlled by each individual state.
Not really. I’m saying that the system discourages change. If there’s blame for the DNC, it’s that their message has constantly been something along the lines of “be reasonable & empathetic; improve the world through measured change” which tends to demoralize people who think the system is seriously fucked. That empowers the career politicians. GOP propaganda, at least for the last 50-or-so years, has been “More guns! More babies! No brown people!” which tends to attract passionate radicals.
Okay, but the states decide if there are open primaries or not. The State is to blame for that, but it can be changed if made a state ballot measure.
That’s not really up for debate. It’s literally state law and dependent on the state. The DNC and GOP don’t decide that.
Is that not the second sentence in my original comment?
The DNC in a nutshell. Absolute garbage.
DNC: I am here for the working people-- from billionaires, all the way to millionaires.
From the business owners to the CEOs, the Democrats are here to hear you. All the people, white or tan, brown people of light complexion as long as they have a 401k and 10 million in assets they will LISTEN
Sadly I don’t think it’s possible to have a party “for the people” with only two parties. There’s too much pressure for both of them to champion the status quo.
“Championing the status quo” is not how I would describe what Republicans are doing right now.
I’m confused. Are you arguing that AOC is or isn’t for the people?
She absolutely is. Her nomination is the DNC’s nightmare.
DNC: “Ewwww a progressive? We wouldn’t be as rich with a progressive in charge!”
Ocasio-Cortez was far ahead of other listed Democrats. Coming in a distant second was close ally Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). The pair recently went to various states with their Fighting Oligarchy tour. Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) placed third in the survey with 8%.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris came in fourth with 6%. Following her was Pete Buttigieg with 5%, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) with 5%, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) with 4%, and California Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA) with 2%.
Why did they list the percentage for all of these people, but not for Bernie’s second place position?
That is a rhetorical question.
I was going to calculate his percentage but 26 + 26 + 22 + 8 + 5 + 5 + 4 + 2 is 98%. Did they lump Bernie in with ‘other’?
The survey they cite has Bernie at 12%, so I’m not sure what method they did to allow for more than 100% - maybe you could choose more than one answer?
Oh, the link underlining was subtle enough that I didn’t see it.
Yeah, they must have allowed for more than one for the numbers to add up.
and California Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA) with 2%.
Looks like Newsom will be the candidate for 2028 then…
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The straightest consistently whitest guy up there is Bernie, just saying. I bet he’s never had a tan in his whole life.
As is tradition.
For the same reason they DIDN’T EVEN MENTION he was a candidate half the time the media mentioned the primaries were happening despite him being in 1st or second at those times.
The rich would never allow a President Sanders. They have too much to lose.
Please don’t fuck this up DNC! Embrace the change!
Harris was supposed to be the one who’d get the Progressives excited and she got fewer votes than Biden did in 2020.
WEIRD! I KNOW Progressives and they LOVE Bombing Children and KEEPING the Status Quo! It’s so WEIRD they WOULDNT Vote for Harris!
When your choice is keeping the status quo, or everything getting a lot worse, that doesn’t seem to be a difficult choice.
Maybe the DNC should stop trying to run on the status quo instead of blaming the voters.
Americans want change, that’s how trump got elected, even the right wing doesn’t like the status quo. They don’t agree on the direction, but the status quo was not the move to make there, not when that includes US funded murder of children
The DNC can do far better, yes. But the voters can also do better. Thinking critically is an important part of participating in democracy.
As I said before the election, there was no option that did not include US funded murder of children. If Trump had been an outspoken opponent of the war in Gaza, (and we had any reason to believe him) then I could see the argument. But that was not the case, was it?
I appreciate the pragmatism, and for what it’s worth, I agree with your logic but voters aren’t pragmatists. They engage emotionally, which is why reactionary movements thrive.
Republicans offered an identity rooted in tribalism, fueled by fear, anger, and even hatred. Yet even a hateful tribe is still a tribe. In an era of loneliness and division, the group that accepts you flaws and all holds a powerful advantage. The side effect? Politics becomes emotional, not intellectual.
And let’s be honest: It’s hard to blame voters for disengaging. First-past-the-post, ‘lesser of two evils’ voting is demotivational at its core.
When every election feels like damage control, idealism withers.
Agreed on all points. But rational thinking is necessary for a functioning democracy.
As you observe, that’s one reason we don’t have one.
Well, they must love bombing children since they worked so hard to keep Trump in.
are you talking about progressives or centrists, dagwood?
Harris was supposed to be the one who’d get the Progressives excited
Well whoever thought of that was clearly a moron
Backing a genocide and pretending like people weren’t having financial issues just because the stock market was up didn’t help much.
She didn’t have any progressive stances, why were they supposed to be excited about her?
Why was she supposed to be? And why did she spend so much time on stage with conservative republicans trying to prove how middle of the road she was?
Why would she have gotten progressives excited?
The question I ask is why people needed to be excited at all?
Trump was openly talking about aiding the Israelis plus stopping aid to Ukraine.
Apparently, people thought if they didn’t vote for Harris Trump wouldn’t win either.
She abandoned all her progressives positions early. I’m no political consultant, but I think thats usually not the best method to win over progressives. I dont think she planned on progressive support-- I think someone told her she could win some republicans and never have to talk to a progressives ever again.
Please, we need her.
