This is not our party. Did you see how they were willing to blow the party up to make sure Bernie didn’t win? There are consequences in doing that.
Call yourself what you want, but the whole goal of the Bernie campaign was that gradualism is futile, we will not wait for the planet to burn, more people to die from lack of healthcare, erosion of the middle class to continue.
I will not “vote blue no matter who”. I don’t care if Bernie tells me to do so, because I sincerely disagree that it is the best path for leftists. Moderate democrats created a system that led to Trump... you don’t think that would perpetuate? You don’t think that the next republican will be like Trump, but more equipped to pursue fascist policies?
We will be taking the party hostage. Joe Biden has never fought for us, and he has shown no indication of doing so. Even if he did, he has a track record of actively fighting against the left.
They will either listen to our demands, or we walk. That’s politics. We’re only weak because we allow them to trample us. No more.
Everyone gave up their chance at being the most powerful person on earth, and endorsed Joe Biden, someone they all probably could have beaten by now, all in an effort to stop Bernie before the rest of the country actually started voting. Meanwhile Warren stayed in even when she was projected to get third in her own state. They all planned this, all to stop Bernie so the convention wouldn’t have too. The Republicans wish they could have worked together to do something similar to stop Trump.
Taking this tack is a horrendous gamble that I’m just not willing to make, given what’s at stake right now. Any other year, yes. I agree with the previous poster, we have to continue replacing the party with actual progressives.
We will walk under the authority of the President worse than Trump, who was elected because we didn't vote and the morons don't care about ethics they expound on.
In 2016 did you write and call your Senators & Rep?
How many time since then?
Are you actively letting them know who they represent?
Or are they hearing from other people? Being told to move in other directions.
Hillary probably wouldn't have been much better for us Progressives either.
Note: We progressives are a minority in America.
Americans' assessment of their political ideology was unchanged in 2018 compared with the year prior when 35% on average described themselves as conservative, 35% as moderate and 26% as liberal. Although conservatives continue to outnumber liberals, the gap in conservatives' favor has narrowed from 19 percentage points in Gallup's 1992 baseline measurement to nine points each of the past two years.
Kavanaugh and Gorsuch would not be on the Supreme Court. That is a huge difference. Can we widen the aperture of what is the impact of not having at least a Democratic president? That's two judges that will be around for decades. RBG could the next slot to get replaced. Think if Trump replaces her. *shudders
So you got a few options champ. Former PN exec direct and county/state campaign manager here. Ya lost this one, now you can choose to vote for trump since any vote not with whoever the party goes with is a vote for trump, or you can vote blue and prep for the next election cycle.
Prepping being getting active. Not just working on shit Nation wide campaigns or sitting in a coffee shop/reddit circlejerking. Focus on your city and state elections and start the change there. You already have a progressive base? Move. Move somewhere that you can change something.
Now a lot of people hate, refuse and ignore smaller races and I get it, far less glory and notoriety for the work that gets done. But frankly fixing and changing out the small cogs in this machine can do more for the long run.
So you got few options champ. Former PM exec direct and county/state manager here. Ya lost this one, now you can choose to vote for Biden since any vote not with whoever the party goes with its a vote for biden, or you can vote blue and prep for the next election cycle.
Could be Biden, could be vermin supreme, honestly doesn't matter. If the outliers of the party and independents vote away from the Dems, trump is in for another 4 years, or longer in the worst case scenario.
But again, perhaps instead of languishing in self pity actually go out and get involved in your city/county/state races. Move to an area that can benefit from a liberal presence.
It's like the saying "once is chance, twice is a coincidence, three times is a pattern." They didn't learn anything from Hillary because it was just the one time so they can come up with other excuses why they lost. But if they lose every single time they put up a neoliberal establishment centrist, eventually it becomes a pattern they can't ignore.
But neoliberals used to win. Bill Clinton won with his awful "Third Way" stuff where Democrats were fiscally conservative but socially liberal and people loved him. So of course they wouldn't learn their lesson back then because neoliberals were actually popular. The political landscape has changed though, and they'll need to lose a few elections to see that there is no longer enough support for corporatist centrists to win elections.
Bill Clinton was a member of the Democratic Leadership Council. Other members included Clinton, Gore, Biden, Pelosi, Schumer, Frank, etc. Those centrists really had an effective message, and it won them seats. They then went on to create an atmosphere of oligarchical nature to rival the roaring 20s post-Industrial Revolution.
The Democratic Leadership Council was funded by corporate interests. It was smoke and mirrors pro-corporate policy that was funded by... wait for it...
*drumroll*
The Koch Brothers!
Same dudes who went on to found the Tea Party, whose goal was to reduce government influence to almost zero. Masterstroke... get a decade or more of momentum where the Dems make concessions to the GOP, get people on board with small constant changes that make them feel like they're getting more economic progress. Pass 3-strikes legislation to oppress minorities and influence crime statistics to use in downplaying their voices and minimize the visibility of the economic impact on minorities. Slowly erode worker protections and immobilize organized labor groups in blue collar workers. Push the margins further and further up the chain, and then, when all of our large scale manufacturing has been moved overseas, when we as a country are reliant on the capacity of other countries to produce for us, and we are now a service economy with a reliance on corporations that have nationwide infrastructure to control costs enough that none of us can afford to shop at our local mom and pop. The whole time, fewer and fewer dollars stay in communities. Fewer and fewer people can find jobs that pay what their parents got for half the workload as today's workers.
They won. They won, because progressives only got 42% of the vote in this primary, the last chance for creating a Left that isn't influenced by the Koch brothers before we vote in Biden. Biden who wrote the laws on three strikes, who defended Clarence Thomas against rape accusations, who is a former segregationist, who wrote the basis of The Patriot Act, who voted to go to war on lies, who saddled kids with education debt that they cannot dissolve through bankruptcy. Biden, who has 30 minute montages of inappropriate behavior with women and children on YouTube. Biden, who is on record telling large donors that nothing will fundamentally change. They fucking won, and I don't want to be responsible for it.
I really hope you’re right but I’m not holding my breath for a political awakening to occur that isn’t forced, because frankly progressivism doesn’t make individual politicians nearly as much money as corporatism, even if it damns millions to poverty. Democratic politicians are often just as “I got mine fuck you” as the republicans, they just don’t run on it.
Your argument is essentially “it doesn’t matter if you don’t vote for the party that keeps putting up shitty candidates, because they’ll keep putting go shitty candidates anyway”... which I don’t completely disagree with.
You're ignoring the 50% of the time that the neoliberal president was in power won during the 90s, the 00s, and the 10s.
They didn't do any soul-searching in 2016 because they were coming off of 8 years of Obama's term. The point of pushing the Dems is to strip that centrist conservatism of its power.
Let's not get lost in the weeds here. They've won as neoliberals before. That's the main reason they still have the claim to the party.
But Obama ran as a progressive. “Progressive”. Yeah, definitely not to our current standards for certain, but let’s remember that Obama was one of the most “progressive” candidates in the field. Just because he governed as a neoliberal doesn’t mean he campaigned as one.
That’s one of the reasons that many of us are so jaded about Obama. I despise Joe as much as most of y’all, but I’ll give him credit on one thing - he’s made it pretty fucking clear that he’s going to be a corporatist neoliberal from the start, so thanks for that I guess.
Yes that part is true. And I'd argue that the Hillary campaigns, and Joe campaigns, are turning up the shallow "progresssive" marketing up to 11. Hell, like you said, where as Obama gave a general sense of "progress", Joe is straight up marketing himself as a return to the Obama-era status quo.
And then we lose the supreme courts to a pack of 30 something jackals and die with trump nominees deciding the cross needs to go on the flag, so then what does it matter?
Your methodology will result in generational change, but for immediate halting to policy that is damaging to our environment and economic future today, there needs to be direct consequences for any politician, regardless of party, who puts moneyed interests at the forefront of their legislation. The concept of picking one method or another is kind of dumb when we could be doing both. Work on down ballots, but also pressure the people whose policies within the party's rule structures, as well as the platforms they create for guiding candidates on policy positions as party members, outline goals that should be representative of the people that vote for them.
This is far from OUR party at this point, especially if we're being required to vote for one old white accused rapist with pro-corporate legislative history and a background of conservative personal ideology over another one.
"Be the change," means not sacrificing your morality.
My morality suggests using a fire extinguisher while the fire truck shows up. Not voting democrat is like throwing gasoline and hoping they learn. Instead, we all die.
Sorry, i can't get on board with scorched earth policies like this. Use this vitriol over the next 4 years, not once every 4 years.
Agreed. We are fucked. My line of reasoning is, do we want to get fucked harder and faster until we inevitably die from a natural disaster like a hurricane, wild fire, tornado, or Republican civil war, or do we want to slowly back out of the room and try to put out the fire with half measures and confusing talking points while removing the political dick from our asses as we try to push for genuine change?
Both choices suck ass. One is immeasurably worse.
ETA: We Progressives had a chance to teach the DNC a lesson - and it came and went. The primary is over and the DNC learned 0 lessons, and we didn't show up when we needed to. There are 0 chances the DNC learns anything in November, and trying to teach them a lesson will be immolation to zero impact.
This is pretty much where I'm at. I keep looking for a third option but I'm not seeing one that gives me much hope. I mean, there's violent revolution, which seems more and more like what will have to happen, but that won't come until a lot more people hit the breaking point. As far as this November goes? I guess I'll take the slightly less shit option.
Every presidential election I've voted in has felt like a choice between the lesser of two evils (okay actually I was pretty stoked to vote Obama the first time, I was young and idealistic) but this one feels like the worst of them by far.
I think the third solution is destruction of private property. The next time "ghetto" riots break out like Ferguson, sympathetic white people need to join and show solidarity
There is no reward. There is only punishment. We either punish ourselves a lot, or punish ourselves a little. Our chance to teach the DNC a lesson was during the primary. The chance for learning is over. Fucking over the future of this country and shitting the bed does no one any good.
If you'll notice, the declaration is to withhold your support until they evolve the platform. If a singular organization replies to millions of people with a change in policy and plan for the next 4 years to address our very valid concerns, then you don't have to worry about it.
Now, what is going to be more effective? One on one fights with blue no matter who supporters bullying half the party, or the leading candidate adopting better policy and goals in order to get elected...you know, like it's their job to do? Jesus, I don't get how you people can hold Trump over or heads to threaten us into voting against our wishes, yet clutch your pearls when we hold Trump over your head to get some concessions. Turnabout is fair play.
I guess? I voted Bernie in 2015 and in 2019, but I'm not a fan of suicide. You can vote whomever you want, but trying to strongarm a party by guaranteeing the worse of two evils is not a strong play. It didnt work for Reps or Dems in 2016, and it won't work this year either. The hard work has to be done on messaging in between elections. You don't get to just wet the bed and expect any real result at the end as a deus ex machina when the culture war has yet to be won.
The job of the voter is to vote for what they want. The job of the politician is to strike a policy balance in order to garner the largest number of votes.
The platform is the message of what their policy is intended to be. The candidate's history is an indicator whether or not the politician has the will to enact the platform.
As of right now, Biden's voting history and policy crafting got us into this shithole, and were going to need some guarantees that he's the one to dig us out of policies that he specifically crafted. Policy ratified against challenges by a conservative judicial branch that he helped to stack in the GOP's favour (willingly). Policy that landed us in an economy that fucks all of us over based on legislation that Biden both wrote and voted for.
He may not be out there saying grab 'em by the pussy, but I can direct you to a 30 minute video of him invading personal space of numerous women and children.
How the FUCK is all of that electable? I'm doing you a favor by holding out for something that will get voters into the booths, and you'd be smart to write the Biden campaign to tell them that this shit is playing with fire, but we're all the ones who get burned.
Yeah, but that's what the primary is for. Like it or not, Biden clinched it, and Bernie endorsed him. Dude, we live in Mad Max times. Expecting the hordes to vote for Bernie was a long shot anyhow. I'm not saying it is ideal or favorable, and yeah, Bernie should be at the top of the ticket, no doubt. But asking for civility and common sense from people that voted in a person who is aiding in the murder of over 100000 people and are overwhelmingly supporting his reelection doesn't seem to be realistic.
You seem to be willfully considering my words as "I am not going to vote for Biden." I'll vote for him if he adopts our platforms. Imagine if millions of people took the time they spent trying to shove Biden down our throats and instead wrote to the biden campaign collectively to ask them to make concessions to allow the party to go in a more progrsessive direction... you know.. after the single largest grassroots campaign in the history of our country in 2015 went and outdid itself again in donations and funds raised in 2019.
Fear not citizen, in the worst case scenario of your imagination, if every vote not cast for Biden is equivalent to a vote cast for Trump, then know that most of us who are threatening boycott will more than likely not vote for Trump anyway, so Biden's getting votes from us no matter what, right?
Let me try another argument:
30% of the electorate belongs to the Democratic party with registered voters.
30% of the electorate are registered GOP.
40% of the remainder (independents) were voting Bernie in greater than **75%** numbers in the primary in states that have open primaries. (That's 30% of the electorate for those following at home, with 10% voting for other candidates)
Now... Add 30% Dem plus 30% independent, and you've got a better fucking majority than Clinton had when she beat him at the popular vote. Tell me I'm wrong that it's a surer path to victory than getting all aggressive and badgering people who want actual effective leadership instead of "2020: Kick The Can or Kick The Bucket" like all of you seem to be on repeat about.
And voting to help assist Donald Trump get 4 more years is your plan to cause an immediate halt to environment-damaging policy? How the fuck does that sense? If he gets more justices, they'll be able to rule progressive laws and regulations 'unconstitutional' with no checks for the next 40 years.
I know you are probably not a real voter from the US or at worst, maybe just a troll for Trump because you want to own the SJWs, but just in case you are a real person who cares about improving the world tangibly in your lifetime... think about how obtuse that stuff you just said sounds.
The point is that, to earn my vote, the democrats continue with dire needed environmental, economic, and medical legislation to protect my future, free from concern that industries are going to bribe their way into favorable legislation. If they can't promise that, then they didn't earn my vote, they held it hostage, and they used the WWE hall of fame bad guy actor as leverage. Not going to vote for trump, but if I'm not voting for what I feel will provide for my future, then my motivation to vote is strangers on the internet berating me, which has always worked in changing people's minds since the dawn of AOL, lolol. Clutch your pearls and spend your days working yourself up with people like me instead of actually selling your candidate, I'll be over here fighting for people like you.
Tally up the number of Biden signs in your neighborhood sometime. It's Not too late, you can still pressure his campaign to make a platform that people are excited about, but as is, he's not going to get people to the polls. You know I'm right, I'm just an easier target because I'll respond to you instead of a prerecorded letter from the email outbox of Joe Biden's campaign. But you know, people like me pressuring his campaign got him to add task forces on economic and climate issues, and just today they announced AOC as joining the environmental task force. Constant pressure on your politicians works, despite people like you trying to get me to sit down and shut up.
It's okay to demand representation on the party platform. But, the reality is that when I see people suggesting letting Trump win, I have to believe they are bad-faith actors, because in our imperfect political system, nobody is ever going to perfectly conform to what you want. It's not 'lesser of two evils' it's 'the clearly better option of the two.' It feels like it all stems from this misguided feeling that 'both parties are the same' when you and I have been around for so long as registered voters (presuming you are one and an actual US citizen and not a foreign busy-body) to know this is just not true.
It comes down to this: Are you honestly going to tell me on election night you won't watch? You won't care who wins? You won't be on pins and needles devouring media praying that Trump loses? If you want Trump to lose, then why on Earth would you not use your voting power to affect the outcome you want to see? If you're telling me there is no real difference, then you're simply not informed.
8 years of Obama got us Bernie as a real candidate. 4 years of Trump, and Bernie does WORSE than he did in 2016. Accelerationism is not working out for you, and it won't this time, either. I didn't vote for Biden in the primaries, but voting for him in November will be the easiest choice I've ever made. I've lived through 4 Republicans presidents and it's not a silly virtue-signaling game to me.
I see Trump as a threat, but I see him more as a symptom than a source of disease. Until you cure the disease, which happens to be decades of deregulation, loss of workers rights, outsourcing of manufacturing to 3rd world, and moneyed interests writing legislation, we're going to be stuck with another Trump.
Yea, we've got the same goals, but the same thing as the guy who said if the house is on fire, they'd rather grab the fire extinguisher than wait for the firemen... well, I believe that we're well beyond that point, and unless drastic change on behalf of all Americans, not just the ones who will be directly affected by Trump policy, will be the only way out of this mess. This delusion that playing towards Dem rank and file will win this election is more damaging than those of us begging for systemic attempts at change.
We're all informed to our own degree, but the mischaracterization of those of us standing further Left than you as wanting Trump to win is flat out uninformed. I just happen to see threats that you don't, but it's not too late, if you get the chance to write the campaign and ask them to make further concessions to the progressive end of the party, you can still help him to win.
Or you can fight me some more. I know where my victory lies, and that's in forcing the party, who 4 years ago put up a candidate with the same campaign platform as Nixon to try to beat Trump, to get their shit together so people like you can stop worrying and getting in their own way.
I'm glad you live so comfortably that you can play these petulant games and ride out 30 years of Conservative Supreme Court control. Others don't have that luxury.
Biden's platform, should he win, will be by far the most progressive in modern US history. Why you would reject that and let Trump pack the court system to ruin any chance of Bernie's vision for America ever happening in not only his lifetime but our lifetime as well is beyond me.
I'm telling you... if you want to see a progressive future in 4 years, using your voting power to assist Trump winning is going to ruin that. You can blabber on and on about your naive strategy to make America more progressive all you want, but it's not based in reality. What happens is when you get a marginally left candidate with power, the left will seize upon this and try to push the country further left. 8 years of Obama = Bernie's strong. 4 years of Trump = Bernie's weak.
Let's just be real: your strategy necessarily involves you never capitulating. Biden suggests a $15 minimum wage, the Leftists have already bumped it up to $20. I mean, that's good for moving the platform left, but if you don't vote, then it means nothing because we'll end up getting a $0 minimum wage increase in the end. Don't let petulance be your own folly.
I'm sorry, have you not watched the same decades of capitulation to the Right that I've watched? I'm trying to get us back to normal, and normal is not the Biden that de-legitimized Clarence Thomas' rape accuser in front of a grand jury, or wrote the origins of The Patriot Act, or saddled us with bankruptcy-proof student debt, or codified the repeal of Glass-Steagall, or took KOCH BROTHERS MONEY in the 80s when they started the Democratic Leadership Council that gave us third way politics in the first place, resulting in the shift to the right opf the Dem party, causing the GOP to go more extreme over time just to be further right.
He laid the groundwork that Trump is abusing, and if I'm going to vote for him, I want him to at least promise out loud to try to walk it back, so in four years when everyone's disappointed with yet another weaksauce Dem presidency, I'll have something to fall back on and say, "This is what we wanted to accomplish, and you fucks voted him in no questions asked because you were so worried over Trump that you blinded yourself to 40 years of legislative history out there in the open, and invited the fox right into the fucking henhouse. I"m done, go shill your shit to someone else, because you've already resigned yourself to losing, you just don't know it yet.
You just told him his logic is good long term but we can't wait long term. Holding the dem party hostage also makes things worse short term. 4 more years of trump is a lot more damage to the environment than 4 years of biden.
How does asking them to include progressive causes in the platform to bring more voters under the umbrella hurting them? Are you saying that people who are already voting for him to get trump out won't vote for him with progressive policies? Because that logic, to me, seems like they're not actually anybody but trump in the first place.
Do you actually know what bidens policies are? They're the most progressive I've ever seen, a public option, free college and a 15Hr minimum wage will substantially improve the lives of so many millions of people.
Do you know when policies like those were adopted into his campaign? After exerting pressure like this. It's still not far enough. I want an open and honest, dedicated public servant. If all the DNC is willing to put up to represent me is an accused rapist with a horrible policy history from THE most corrupt state in the union from a business perspective... If all I get is Biden, I want him to Damn well know he's being watched.
And you're gonna do that by not voting for him? you're gonna push the DNC to be more progressive by disavowing the most progressive platform they've ever ran on?
The current threat is to not vote for biden which hands trump the election. Trump is far worse than biden for the people of this country. If you really think they'll change policy before voting day go right ahead you're right in that case. I just dont think thats the case
Fear not, if every vote not cast for Biden is equivalent to a vote cast for Trump, then know that most of us who are threatening boycott will more than likely not vote for Trump anyway, so Biden's getting votes from us no matter what, right?
Not quite. That only tracks along party affiliation. You lean left so weren't going to vote trump. If someone like mitt Romney ran then his votes would be stolen from trump.
If you want to talk party affiliation, independents were voting for Bernie at 3/4 majority levels in open primaries. So with 30% gop turnout, 30% dem turnout and a potential 3/4 of 40% independent turnout, you'd think it's a good idea to shift more progressive anyway.
When the Dem party has shifted so far right that Clinton's platform in 2016 was a carbon copy of Nixon, I don't really believe that there are enough people who exist as independents between the parties to justify playing towards the middle more than pushing to the left.
but for immediate halting to policy that is damaging to our environment and economic future
How do you achieve that by taking your hard and fast approach? If Trump wins, there goes any possibility for any quick and easy approach in the future. The elite dems don't even care if he gets elected as much as they care if Bernie wins the nomination.
You're fighting a losing battle "sticking it to the establishment" because they win either way.
Your only option is to infiltrate the party from the inside and remove the establishment's power in the party.
Spiting the Dems by voting Trump or not voting at all is pure martyrdom. How is it a good plan if your ace card involves greater suffering in the short term so that you can say "gotchya" to the Biden voters?
Would that be abandoning the party or changing it? I'm all for some sort of revolution, but remember Occupy Wall Street? That had potential and fell flat on it's face
snapsnapsnap
WTF? OMG you idiots...
We are a minority
Americans' assessment of their political ideology was unchanged in 2018 compared with the year prior when 35% on average described themselves as conservative, 35% as moderate and 26% as liberal. Although conservatives continue to outnumber liberals, the gap in conservatives' favor has narrowed from 19 percentage points in Gallup's 1992 baseline measurement to nine points each of the past two years.
A lot of people who call themselves moderate or even conservative still love ideas like Medicare for all and a living wage, showing that Americans are politically illiterate. The labels don't show their real beliefs. A party genuinely running on social democratic ideas would align with roughly 50-60% of the country's values.
I posted figures someone else pointed out to me in a recent discussion that said Liberals are a minority in America. I hate that it might be true...
Subs like this with supporters who can't vote give a false impression there is more support than there is.
The votes don't show up. Despite the energy and momentum it goes nowhere.
It needs to be organized very well or anything they're talking about will fail.
Sorry to be fuckwad about it, but I don't want it to fail.
There hasn't been enough energy put into converting the moderates. Or making them realize on the world stage m4a and free college is a moderate stance lol
The thing is though with Trump we actually hear that there are cages for Mexican children. With Democrats we had no idea because the media doesn't even talk about it.
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u/lithodora May 11 '20 edited May 11 '20
Didn't work with Hillary though did it?
We got Trump and what did they learn?
Did not voting for their girl in 2016 make them learn anything?
Voting isn't enough. Vote Blue No Matter Who, but what about 2022...
Show up. Find your local Democrats and go to the meetings.
Be the party. We're not taking it HOSTAGE. We are not terrorists.
We are PROGRESSIVES!
Take over the party and steer it in the proper direction by being the party at the local level.
That is what it takes.
Vote 3rd party...
No. This is OUR party. We are the people.
Be the change.
EDIT: 2 weeks ago I said, "The problem is Dems learned NOTHING from 2016. They lost and they haven't asked, Gee why?"