we can vote (for candidates who actually have a plan)
And they are who, exactly?
I’m posting this for the third time this week, in case any of you have not yet read it. (At time of posting this, my ISP is telling me this site is insecure - yet it let me view it several times earlier this week. )
But this type of panic rant … doesn’t actually help the cause.
Yes it does. Staying silent about the uselessness of the only viable opposition to hell-bent fascists does not help the cause. The cause needs a Dem party with a fucking plan, not a fund-raising organisation whose only apparent objective is to outspend its opposition.
ETA and that guy is 100% correct in everything he says. It has made me (a UK resident) so angry, because I recognise that fascism in the US means fascism in many other places. We all need the Dems to set an example as to HOW to fight it politically. And they haven’t got a fucking clue. Rants like this are needed to somehow get them to change. Because if they don’t change, nothing in the US will change for the better.
it might have more impact if redirected.
Oh yeah? @Carla_Sinclair Where exactly do you suggest he would have more impact with that anger? Not a rhetorical question.
BB does often annoy me, it’s all part and parcel of the fun in coming here. But this post has made me really fucking angry. I’m shutting down now and going to tend my garden to calm down.
No, no we are not. I will not accept that. If we were powerless, the damned fascists wouldn’t spend so much time and effort trying to make us powerless. They fear our power. And they should. We need to get up and do.
I write and call my representative and senators (and sometimes the president).
Make a clear demand, be specific, be polite the the aide answering the phone if you call.
But be urgent. “People are losing patience.” “You need to do more than tweet about this.”
I wrote an Op-Ed for the county Democratic party blog. Note that it ends in a call to action, and a website for looking up the contact information for electeds.
Indeed. Complain, criticize, protest, and make demands. Bombard your representatives and senators with letters and calls. Let them know you are mad, and want them to do something about it.
But, at the same time, go out and vote. Vote Democratic, in every election, at every level, from the local dogcatcher to the President.
And if you have the money, the time and the energy, please donate and volunteer. Get organized. Hell, run for some local office yourself, if you think you can swing it.
Despair is death, and apathy will only make things worse. Anyone who tells you to give up is an enemy of yours, no matter what their ostensible politics and credentials. Change is possible, but there are plenty of people who are trying very hard to make you disbelieve that.
He showed us exactly who he was going to be as a politician the second he came down that escalator and opened his fucking mouth. And the media underplayed all the racism, all the lies, all the misogyny, all of it. And now look where we are… The media should be warned about him for day one, but instead, they just assumed it could never get this bad. Well, it fucking did and they failed to take that threat seriously. American exceptionalism had a lot to do with that.
I think it would really help for more of us to get involved with our local party, too, if possible. This is how the Trump wing took over, because the Tea Party before him did that. More of us progressives should, too.
He’s not wrong.
A FPTP two party system can never work.
In theory, if the opposition party is exactly as extreme in the opposite direction to the other main party, sure.
But when the ruling party starts infiltrating the opposition it all falls apart and you get whats happening with the US and the UK, with an evil party and a slightly less evil party as the only options available…
at that point you can:
-vote for pure evil
-vote for evil
-vote doesn’t count
That has been my lifelong voter experience in the UK
Actual big tents are noisy places. Why do you think the GQP platform was “whatever trump says”? As I said in another thread, I’ve definitely seen talking points percolate up from progressive voices outside of traditional media (podcasts, twitter, etc) more than ever before. That doesn’t mean we start to lay off because it’s messy, that means we need to apply more pressure, be more vocal and make sure they hear us and take us seriously.
Bingo! I’d also add that that confrontation always comes from an extremely small minority that is considered fringe when they initiate.
The core conceit of this argument that letting the GQP see progressives’ dirty laundry is wholly misplaced. The issue isn’t with Democrat-leaning voters being unable to reach consensus. Hell, the Squad was far more instrumental in reaching compromise on BIF and the American Rescue Plan than any other bloc. The issue is with Sinema and Manchin and other poison-pill Dems who directly lie to their constituency. Just like McConnell, they need to be made irrelevant by electing more vocal and proud progressives and holding a functional majority. Just two Senate pickups relegates these two fools to the dustbin of history.
And plenty more that I am not as familiar with, especially at the state level. They are becoming emboldened by the vocal support among voters and learn a lot about what the left really wants by rants just like this one. Definitely not the time to keep quiet and mind our manners.
I don’t know how common it is in other states, but in NY a candidate can run on multiple parties. If a candidate has the endorsement of the Working Families Party, they get my vote on that line every time. It’s kind of my way of sticking it to the Dem establishment for their inaction, but also a literal vote for the types of platforms I want to see without compromise.
Since I became elligible to vote, the Democrats have, for THREE two year periods controlled the Presidency, both houses of Congress, and the Supreme Court.
During this time, they could have passed any number of laws strengthening abortion rights, privacy, police accountability, redirecting economic policy to favor the lower classes instead of the 1%, gotten us fucking healthcare- And they DIDN’T.
They could have passed measure after measure pushing further and further gun control, and THEN offered to back off if the Republicans played ball on something else. They could have changed the rules to rig the game in OUR favor. They DIDN’T.
They could have used their power to do multiple small things that directly benefitted the lower classes, and then constantly reminded the voters of what they’ve done. They DIDN’T.
I wholeheartedly agree with what seems to be a majority of the posters in this thread; screw those guys. Being slightly less awful doesn’t earn you my gleeful endorsement.
I got to admit I’m not American, and I’m looking at the current events from across an ocean, but… “slightly less awful” is not how I’d describe Democrats when comparing them to the Republicans. It smacks of lazy “pox on both of your houses!” cynicism, and is both inaccurate and unhelpful.
You can definitely think the Democrats are inefficient or too timid or should focus on different priorities. But if you say the huge, yawning gulf between them and the GOP of today is just “slightly less awful”, I’m going to think that you either don’t know what you’re talking about, or are not acting in good faith.
Can everyone vote for them?
Not intending to be snarky, so yes there are some great Dems with clear goals and ideas as to how to achieve them. So I addressed the wrong point. The point is not whether some (local) candidates have a plan - the PARTY needs to have clear goals and concrete proposals for action to get them implemented, so that wherever someone votes and whoever their local Dem candidates are, they can vote confidently for the local Dem candidates knowing what the PARTY will implement if it gets power. The leaders of the Dem party seem not to be able to articulate any clear party platform that will appeal across the nation, other than “give us $15 please”. Do they even say what the $15 is specifically for? What it will achieve? What policies it will help implement if they win?
I’m not sure that public protests in blue states are helping. One power move would be for an entire generation of voting age with remote work jobs or qualifications to look at tipping point districts and states, and move there.
Yes. It’s not enough to have a tiny smattering of AOC-types. Every Democrat needs to get on AOC’s level and be honest, logical and passionate as the bare minimum. She is not a radical leftist, she’s the closest thing the party has to an actual representative for the majority of citizens who want things like universal health care and sane gun control but who are utterly ignored by almost all politicians, Democrats included. Show me a Democratic Party that has even a single member that I disagree with because they’re too far left instead of too far right and then I’ll believe they’re serious about getting things done.
Sometime soon, yes ideally. I didn’t mean that as a counterpoint to your query, but rather that there is a clear future path for this party and certain members do have a clear plan that they consistently elucidate.
You’re right. And since, at the moment, they hold most of the cards, it’s incredibly frustrating to watch them do next to nothing. However, these (mostly) women are laying out exactly what the party’s future looks like and getting traction despite having little to no real legislative power. Katie Porter cornered the Surgeon General and made him promise that COVID tests would be free to all Americans regardless of insurance coverage. Stacy Abrams flipped the entire state of Georgia with a GOTV campaign that is being copied across the nation. She’s not even an elected official (yet!), yet wields enormous power. Damn near every time AOC speaks she redefines the public narrative. These are the people who would usually be relegated to lower committee assignments and junior roles and forced to work their way up the ladder by playing the game, a game entirely defined and controlled by the Blue Dogs. By which time their edges are all sanded off and they hug Lindsay Graham for his “bipartisan”. The new batch has decided “Fuck it. I’ve actually studied these issues and know what we can do in the short and long-term and decided not to be defeated by a bureaucracy of intransigence.” That’s the future of the Democratic Party because if not there won’t even be a need for parties at all.
On the hand you can not rant about it and just quietly stew in anger until you no longer care and throw your vote away on a third party candidate (well meaning as they may be) or worse stop voting at all.
If you do give them money they will become exponentially more annoying in pestering you for yet more money.
We have protested. We have voted. The protests achieved very little because the people we voted into office did not do the job we put them there for. The anger is justified, and the party has to see that they have to actually fight for the shit that matters to us. Clearly the votes and the protests didn’t do that, so something else is required. Acting like more of the same is going to be effective is incredibly naive and just feeds the cowardice and inertia of democratic leadership, at the expense of the lives and rights of working people.
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