Summary
Parkland shooting survivor and activist David Hogg is running for a vice-chair position on the Democratic National Committee, advocating for bolder leadership to reconnect with young voters and working Americans.
Citing frustration with Democratic losses, Hogg argues the party must move away from establishment politics and address pressing issues like healthcare and economic struggles.
He highlights declining youth support as a crisis and criticizes party leaders for ignoring voter concerns.
Hogg aims to bring fresh perspectives to the DNC as the party prepares to counter a resurgent Donald Trump and GOP-controlled Congress.
I get why he’s doing it, but we must move away from the Democratic Party.
I’ll start by saying I agree with you in principle. But if we’re going to do that, we need a new party. Like it or not, ours is a two party system. Replacing a party has to be done right now, between elections, when there is time to build the infrastructure, donor network, and candidates at every level of government. So are we starting a new progressive party, or are we glomming onto an existing third party? Your call to action is half a thought.
The best model is the tea party caucus of the GOP. They were able to completely hijack the party while keeping the structure in tact.
The original tea party were ron Paul supporters, who the GOP did a Bernie on. Then the crazies took over and now they’re magats. The reason the GOP wins people over is because the majority of Americans are not smart enough for politics, they go with sound bites and feel goods.
If it’s gonna be done in 4 then we should probably glom onto an existing party. Hogg apparently thinks so too, but i disagree with him that the DNC can be “saved”.
Like he’s not wrong to try but there’s lots of examples of the DNC working against Dem reps who aren’t neoliberal enough. We should recall the ruling in 2017 against Sanders, essentially:
So i wish this guy the best but he (and we) would be better off trying to join a smaller yet already existing party like the Greens or PSL. Hell even if ya didn’t agree with one a them party’s whole platform, it’s still a better idea, a more likely chance to join them and change them from within… The Ds and Rs would be a much more difficult battle.
PSL are basically tankies now and the Greens are fully captured by Russian oligarchs. Both are small enough that you’re right, maybe it’ll be easier to change them. However, I doubt it because in some ways they’re more radical than the Dems so more set in their beliefs. Dems might be easier to change from within because there’s already so many camps, it’ll be easier to form a coalition.
Also, as much as I like Sanders, people need to let 2016 go. He knew the rules, he’d been in the Senate since 2007 and in politics since the 70s. Superdelegates were not some secret, Sanders knew he had to win them over too. Democrats didn’t like him because he ran as a Democrat for the funding and platform, but was an Independent before and an Independent afterwards.
Ultimately, he wanted to use the Dems but didn’t want to work for them. I have zero problem with him doing this, but I’m also not surprised the party leaders didn’t line up behind him as the nominee. Same deal as Clinton and Harris, they knew the rules and that the game was rigged in Trump’s favor through the electoral college (and sexism), and they lost. I don’t have to like the result, but I’m also not going to say any of them were robbed. The only person that can legitimately claim to have a modern presidential election stolen from them is Al Gore because he actually won the nomination and electoral college. The Supreme Court changing the results is not in the rules that anyone agreed to.
I think people are still hung up on 2016 because it’s the most brazen and blatant showing in recent memory of the Democratic Party ignoring their constituents in favor of a candidate who was largely only popular with corporate donors. Most of the time, they ignore the pleas of young voters or some other group that they then blame their loss on for not showing up, and the rest of the voter base is right there blaming them as well. In 2016, Sanders ran on policies supported by 60% or more of the population - even many Republicans were in support of his policies, so long as you told them the policies before saying whose they were.
It also doesn’t help that both Clinton and Harris ran on policies that didn’t speak to the concerns of the general public, but the big one that gets me is still going on - the media bias. I’ll never forget or get over how several TV channels aired 30 minutes of Trump’s empty podium instead of Bernie’s speech.
Hmm, no man, this ain’t it.
You mean not learn lessons from the past? Specifically not understanding the difference between a primary (the DNCs process of selecting a nominee for president) is not, and does not have to be a democratic process?
If you don’t even understand that the DNC is a private company that by law may select any candidate they please, refrain from speaking on politics until you do.
That ain’t it, fam
You are correct. Simple inertia will keep most voters right where they are in the Democratic party no matter what. There is no way to generate a massive movement to a new party or to an existing 3rd party. It’s not going to happen. Millions of voters are not going to suddenly jump ship and go to another party.
On the other hand, it might take only thousands of young people to take over enough local and state Democratic parties so that the corruption at the higher levels of the party can be rooted out and the party can be changed into a legitimate party of the working class.