It feels like I’ve read, watched, or listened to a version of this every 3 days for the past 30 years. “We are all DOOOOOMED unless the Democratic Party implements my policy preferences immediately!!!” Sure, one day this will be right, but at this point pundits professors, and twenty eleven million folk have predicted 150,000 of the last zero ends of America.
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It kinda is about both sides. When AOC primaried an incumbent Democrat in a safe district the next election the DNC said they would not support any candidate that did what AOC did. By then AOC was a superstar, advocating for popular causes. So it is logical to think that the DNC did it because what AOC advocates for is not what the leadership of the Democratic party wanted to advocate for.
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One of my key policy preferences is for the Dems at both the federal and state level to do a take-no-prisoners push for voting rights in the face of a GOP onslaught against them. Totally unreasonable and alarmist, I know. /s
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We don’t fix these problems by either ignoring them or making them worse. Everyone deserves equal protection under the law and everyone deserves equal access to the public sphere. It’s no longer just the domain of white men and it never fucking should have been.
No. There is plenty of criticize about the Democrats (as, you know, PEOPLE IN THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY REGULARLY DO!), but they are not out and out fascists right now. If you can’t see that, then I don’t know what to tell. Clearly, you’re not in the line of fire, so perhaps you don’t care if someone else is.
I mean, which side are you on here? Do you think that if you give the far right my rights, the rights of POC, the rights of the LGBQT+ community, they won’t fucking come for you too? Because they will. When it comes to authoritarianism (which is what the current Trumpian GOP actually is right now, unarguably), you either hold the line or you give in to them. And ignoring the rights of some for your comfort is precisely that.
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And just to pile on, even SWM who don’t toe the party line will get dehumanized in an jnstant. “Race Traitor” is about the worst epithet they can think to throw at you.
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In the context of the US, yeah, the Democrats sit over the centre. In the context outside the US, there’s no left or centre parties in the US. You have a solidly right-wing party, and an extreme right-wing party. There’s a couple of Dems here and there who veer left, but most are solidly right-wing. Even in Canuckistan, the Overton window has dragged the Liberals to be a right-centrist party, but the US doesn’t have anything like the New Democrats to occupy the left.
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I’m on the side of AOC and Bernie Sanders. Using AOC to advocate genericly for Democrats when even her party continues to undermine her is not a winning strategy. Remember Manchin has been a known quantity for a long time and they still push for his reelection. He was the reason that the Democrats used for all of their corporate friendly solutions during Obama’s term. We’d like to do gun reform but Joe Manchin wouldn’t go for it. We’d like to offer Single Payer but Joe Manchin wouldn’t go for it.
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Then get involved in the party if you want to move it to the left!!! This isn’t fucking rocket science here, my dude. AOC and Bernie are not some kind of gods, they are regular folks who decided that they wanted to have a say in how the country is run and to try and give us a real alternative to the third way of post-Clinton democratic party. There is nothing magical or special about either of them, OTHER THAN THEY GET INVOLVED. It’s something we can ALL do if we really want to have a voice in what the Democratic party looks like. If you have not been convinced that in the modern era, working from some kind of pure, third party position gets us nowhere, then you need to pay better attention to what’s happening in the world.
Maybe YOUR rights are not under direct attack from the right wing, but MINE ARE. Maybe you don’t give a shit. We stop that shit, or we go full on authoritarian. And guess what? AOC is a democrat, and Bernie caucuses with them, because they are smart enough to know that they are better than the fucking alternative.
FFS.
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I’m Canadian and I vote NDP most of the time. I’m pointing out what I see as an outsider. Which is a party that doesn’t want to win if they have to listen to the plebs.
You know better, I guess, than me, who is in a fucking swing state that just materially had a positive impact on the last election… but hey, what the fuck do I know?
And another party that literally wants to kill all the plebs who are not white and christian… but you know… not a real threat, so… /s
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If you have another option, please please present it. We live in a 2-party system, and one of them is one small step away from armbands and goosestepping. The other is far from perfect, but generally trends more in my direction, and most importantly I have a seat at the table with them. We can push the Democratic party to more closely approximate our ideals. Do you really think you can do so with Repubs? And if your answer is some 3rd party dream, keep in mind that those are frequently funded by the right specifically to split the progressive vote. I do wish there were a viable truly progressive party, but in the current situation we need to remember that if the fascists win, it’s game over and our infighting about not progressive enough ceases to matter.
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I want to believe it’s mostly “led to,” truly. But I’ve been on the Earth a pretty long time now, and it feels like “led” only worked because of American’s natural proclivities in that direction. Even in our cultural mythology we never actually had “one for all, and all for one.” (e.g. before the Civil Rights Act, ask any brown person about the mythical golden past)
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I don’t understand how people STILL don’t get this, especially those who live right north of us, who would have to deal with the fall out of an authoritarian take over, too. Do Canadians REALLY want a massive wave of refugees pouring into their country form the south? Do they really want to have a full on fascist neighbor making demands of them, by threat of military force? Is that REALLY what they want to happen?
People forget, we don’t have a parliamentary system, like all the civilized countries, so we have to strategize differently. I’d love to have ranked choice voting and greater third party inclusion, but right now, we have to sort through the actual crisis right in front of us, which is a threat from the authoritarian right wing.
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Not really sure where you are going with this. Historically, we actually have moved in the direction of equal rights for all. Granted it has been by fits and starts, but compared to the rich, white, males only governance the country started with, despite “All men are created equal” being among our founding principles, we have made (agonizingly slow, at the price of much blood) progress. We have a long way to go, but the evidence for the ground covered is plain, and I choose to believe that we will continue making progress, if we can contain this current reactionary fascist outbreak.
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The solution is investigating how he DNC is managed and trying to make structural changes there so that more good progressive candidates lead. It is infuriating to see you all get a win and then have it evaporate due to some technicality and excuses, when the other side seems to do very good in getting their agenda passed.
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Yes, and those too are things that have led Americans in general to act like selfish children. Or as you better put it, “lazy, selfish, anti-intellectual, and disinterested in good governance.”
I agree with you, and I don’t think you’ve countered what I had to say. 
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I am certain the Repubs would love to accommodate your desires as soon as they grab power. Discrediting the opposition with pointless and endless investigations is tight up their alley!
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Agreed. The USA has a two party system and now is not the time to attempt changing it. Now is the time to protect the right to vote, deal with our fascism issue, and safe guard our democracy. Has to the DNC fucked up? Absolutely and repeatedly. Are they still supportive of civil rights for everyone? Yes and that’s the part that matters right now. Some of the efforts to protect and expand voting rights and civil rights will pay off later for getting more progressive candidates elected. And voting at the local level is critical for both that and fighting fascists. Most candidates aren’t like AOC. Most work their way up from local positions. So we elect the progressive candidates we want at the local lvl and then help them push further.
But it will all be useless we pull ourselves out of the fascist hellhole we’re falling into.
@Jared_Moore so you dislike the DNC and want more people like AOC and Bernie? As you are Canadian, you can’t vote here. But you can put your time and money where your mouth is. Do online volunteer work and donate to the progressive Democratic organizations like Brand New Congress. Or push for more progressive candidates in Canada. The USA political landscape should serve as a warning. No county is safe from fascism.
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now, yes. it got co-opted from black activists and turned 180 in it’s meaning. just like “critical race theory” ( not to mention “patriotism” or “research” )
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It’s strange to realize just how much “spectating US politics” is kind of an international sport/passtime/obsession these days isn’t it?
I guess almost everyone has invested in it… one way or another…
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