Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2017/10/09/ranked-ballots-vs-attack-ads.html
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The GOP kept winning over the past three decades in large part because they understood that a party builds both a talent base of candidates and secures the structural means to win (in their case via gerrymandering, voter suppression laws, and other cheats) by starting at the school boards, city halls, and state houses first and working up, and not just in so-called blue states (as we see from this story, they’re mostly purple).
The Democratic establishment responded not by emulating that model (sans cheats, except during their own primaries) but by shifting right into Third Way neoliberal-lite politics and taking a top-down approach. It worked for a short time during the 1990s, but wasn’t going to survive the new economic and technological realities
I’m glad that Sanders’ work during 2016 was not the end but the beginning of a challenge to that outmoded way of thinking about how to win (policy is a separate but related issue). While Clinton and her DNC enablers continue to pin the bulk of the blame for their embarrassing loss on everyone but themselves, these progressives are moving things forward.
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McG for Me!
This is great to hear… new candidates that aren’t beholden to existing political machines are desperately needed. Bernie can’t last forever.
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They finally figured out that in America the right wing coup was in slow motion and took decades.
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BTW: y’all get that the Berniecrats are now the right wing of the real American opposition?
The right wing of the DSA is Bernie-ish, but their left wing are substantially more radical than that. And plenty of the street activists reject the DSA as being too mainstream and conservative…
If you want to keep things moderate, back Bernie. He’s a lovely old dude, but he isn’t a radical.
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