I highly recommend reading Ezra Klein’s latest book “Abundance” for a look at why the DNC has been losing the working class. It also offers some optimistic ideas for moving forward.
AOC might not want to be POTUS though? It’s odd how many people have decided this for her.
Times are desperate
Ok? That still doesn’t mean she is obligated to pursue the office
No of course not but it expains why people are this adamant about it
she said she doesnt want to be, felt like the house is a better situation for her. much like harris other vp candidates, one of them wasnt keen on being her vp at the moment, probably read the room.
That just makes her more qualified!
— Plato
Can we get Andrew Yang as an option?
you mean Asian Joe Biden?
No the only adult in the room willing to talk about wealth redistribution
he didn’t have a real plan for that though. it was a semblance of a plan.
The global elite using their newspapers to laugh him out of the room didn’t mean he didn’t have a plan.
Established power didn’t like his plans.
https://www.politifact.com/article/2019/aug/12/andrew-yangs-universal-basic-income-proposal-expla/
Under Yang’s proposal, every American over 18 would receive a payment from the government for $1,000 a month, or $12,000 a year.
Yang says the payments would be offset by a 10% value-added tax, VAT, and by replacing duplicative social-welfare spending. Current recipients could choose between their existing benefits and $1,000 in cash.
It was pretty simple and didn’t even require new congressional funding.
You’re allowed to go learn about the world instead of spitting out the propaganda we are fed
so his plan was to force consumers to pay for it through VAT? how the fuck is that redistribution of wealth?
small businesses, low income households and rural communities would have the most to lose! thats not even mentioning the cluster fuck it would put American medical in since they would likely be hit the hardest due to all of the products and services they use that are made across the entire world.
let’s ignore the obvious though, and say that it happened. VAT is in place. now what happens?
Sure the government could redistribute those taxes back through welfare but let’s be honest, 75-85% of those funds would be earmarked for defense like it always is.
it’s a stupid idea that only idiots support, and there’s plenty of idiots already running the show now.
removed by mod
just because you don’t understand how a VAT works doesn’t mean anyone who speaks out against them knows less than you.
not sure if you realize this, but you’re no better than a MAGAt singing the glory of your fearless leader. only difference is that Trump was able to brainwash more people and I don’t know if that’s better or worse for you. you got swept up in a two-bit charlatans half-baked dream of “wealth distribution” and didn’t bother to look at the pill he told you to swallow.
get your shit together and figure it out. ignorance of the truth is no excuse to the garbage you’re supporting.
and conspire to defeat whatever progressive is winning, even though they’ll be the only one that can defeat trump’s third term
Okay but the point is they should’ve been able to run a wet paper bag against Trump and win.
Dems chose someone worse than a wet paper bag.
It wasn’t the wrong candidate, it was the wrong campaign.
The Dems stood in front of an electorate crippled by 4 years of rising cost of living and said “Look how good the economy is! GDP is up! Employment is up!” The electorate said “We can’t afford eggs,” and the Dems said “Shut the fuck up our economy is great how dare you say otherwise you worthless peasant!”
The Dems never stopped to consider that high GDP is meaningless if all the money ends up in the hands of billionaires and high employment is meaningless if everyone is working three jobs to make rent. Biden refused to allow any daylight between himself and Kamala on any issue, so they ended up just presenting a new wrapper on the same shit sandwich.
Trump meanwhile said “I hear you, everything is too expensive. I’ll solve it by blaming immigrants and doing some magic involving something called tariffs that I promise will make everything cheaper.” Now, none of that is actually a solution, but that didn’t matter, because when you yell “Help, I’m drowning!” and one person says “No you’re not”, while the other says “Yes you are and it’s because of brown people…” you don’t really listen to anything past the “Yes you are,” because the point is they apparently want to help you and the other person doesn’t. Trump didn’t need to have workable solutions, because the Dems forfeited the entire contest before it even started. Trump just had to show up and sit in the chair.
I dunno. Pretty sure a wet paper bag would have been better than a felon rapist traitor who’s shitting on our Constitution and tanking our economy.
Right, that’s why they were worse.
🔴
If we want to make it more likely for a progressive to win the nomination, taking grassroots action now can make a big difference.
Are you looking to get involved to make a difference in the two party system? Get more progressives in office? Enable progressives to be the future face of the Democrat Party in your state? Then the biggest thing I can recommend would be joining an organization such as the Equal Vote Coalition. Their goal is to get better voting systems in place across the country, moving away from First Past the Post which has locked us into our two party system. Alaska and Maine have already succeeded in moving away from First Past the Post voting.
If we take action now, we can potentially get the voting system changed locally or on the state level for many of us before the midterm elections. Then as we continue to make progress, by the time 2028 rolls around we could safely pick our preferred candidates first and have safe backup candidate options so our preferred candidate(s) have a much greater chance at winning.
Help start a ballot initiative in your state here.
If it is not Bernie, AOC I ain’t going to vote. Also ain’t voting for anyone funded by AIPAC.
The great thing about the orange turd- gurgler, is that he’s so bad, even the bad democrats might be popular enough to elect in enough numbers to have the majority to get things done - if our republic survives.
My thinking is that we need the dems that we can get into office, then work on replacing them with better ones, as we go. The moderates definitely need to go away… enough with the “meeting in the center,” when the center is always moving to the right.
The voters need to have realistic expectations as well - we’ve been in decline since the '70s - it won’t be fixed in 4 or 8 years, but nothing is going to be fixed at all, so long as corporations and billionaires are in charge.
Of course they will. Liberalism is a center-right ideology, they’re closer to fascists than leftists.
It’s just a way to get minorities to vote for you.
Their good old performative “Fight for Equality” which very pointedly ignores Wealth Inequality and Wealth Discrimination which curiously, are not only the biggest of them all by a huge margin, but are even the mechanisms that multiply many-fold the negative consequences (and hence the hurt) from other kinds of inequality and discrimination, AND stop the descendants of the victims of past discrimination from pulling themselves out from the hole past discrimination threw their ancestors into (in simple terms: if you were thrown into poverty by discrimination, the poverty keeps the hurt going even after the discriminatory actions have stopped and will make it very likely your descendants are stuck there and keep on suffering).
They’re literaly doing the very minimum (when measured by actual effects) they can for Equality whilst claiming they’re “Fighting for Equality” as loud as they can, in order to claim they’re “helping the disfavored” and hence are there for the many not the few.
As time goes on, I think it’s less and less strange our dominant conservative party is called the “Liberal” Party of Australia.
They practically the same party as the democrats. So I guess the name makes sense.
The US is so far right it hurts and Australia is not even that left wing these days.
The only thing I’m proud of is that our media is practically 100% right-wing/corporate interest captured, and we STILL manage to elect left of centre governments from time to time.
Preferential voting is something very near and dear to my heart.
so you’ll campaign against them for one reason or another and help trump to a historic third term?
For the whole history of democratic primaries, the nominee was always the one that received the most votes. It probably of doesn’t have to be, but it always is. “they” in question are people of America who know more than nothing about how democracy in their country works.
Progressives are going to bitch and moan about how nobody does what they want, but will refuse to participate in the very process designed to ask them what they want.
It’s almost like some idiots on the internet don’t want change, they want to be oppressed.I’ve voted in every Democratic primary since I could vote for Kucinich. State and local, too. When does participation mean they care what I think?
There is a very lovely pattern I see. Every time there is a conversation on the internet, everyone totally always voted and participated and canvassed and run and also fed the homeless at the same time, and every time there are any elections upcomming, there is no end to the constant anti-democracy messages about how voting is pointless and nobody should do that because both sides.
In the end, around 20% of registered voters are voting in democratic primaries, and I repeat my thesis, every time the nominee was the person who got the most votes, every time. So the answer to your question - they already care what you think, and if more people were agreeing with you, then maybe they would do what you want. So far they’re doing what majority of voters wants, and that’s not on the shadowy democratic demons, it’s on majority.
Okay so I’m just never gonna be happy with my government because I’m too weird.
Maybe I should be an independent. Since I’m in a swing state they might actually care what I think.
That’s not how democracy in your country works. And because a bunch of people also don’t know that, you are in that situation.
Unless you learn how it works and will start working on it with this knowledge, you will indeed be unhappy, but it’s nit government’s fault, it’s yours for not educating yourself.You mean like the off-year, primary election ballot I have sitting on my table to be filled out?
I know how this shit works. I’ve been doing what people say to do for 25 years.
When will it start working?
Gavin Newsom may sound smart, but he’s got his hands in your pockets stealing your money to feed the rich, kinda like the current emperor in chief.
Of course not. They can’t accept that their most passionate base actually wants progressive platforms, not centrist pop pandering. Dems are too worried about being “safe” and trying to steal votes from conservative-centrists. If they actually showed bills and votes to invigorate the actual progressives, they just might get some loyal backing.
Really, how do we get viable third parties? How do we change the voting system to not have " spoiler candidates "? The binary is rotting us.
Have you considered just having like a local group organized around something like pro-labor or just the community in general.
Elect officers or organize how you think best. Call meeting invite guess to speak to issues you all like. When elections come around try to solicit questions to all the campaigns. Have the organization vote as a group on who to endorse or not at all.
If it’s worth the effort, work the campaigns for the folks you all endorse.
More people did that stuff then starting a third party in state would be easy. From there you go forward. If you do well or brand then you may have others in their region wanting to do the same. National two parties are federations of these groups with more binding Charters.
Many States have these hurdles for recognized political parties but they can’t stop folks from just organizing how they want.
How? Probably not via voting in 2028 or holding a sign. As in, not within the pre-existing failing/failed system. This one isn’t gonna recover.
After the people are in charge of the smouldering ashes, you can start from scratch! The one upside. Assuming USA doesn’t just submit passively and end up like Russia with a broken people for centuries, which is what I’m expecting.
Copy Canadians. Including the limits on campaign length, so your news cycle isn’t so endlessly exhausting. No wonder 1/3rd have totally tuned out. IMO scrap FPTP like we didn’t have the balls to do.
I guess that’s the crux of the question: does it really require smoldering ashes to get this done? Entrenched power is obviously tough times, but within the system we currently have what are the possibilities?
Not sure anyone really knows yet. I’m a pessimist by nature, so there’s blind spots and I freely admit them.
You go out and work in the primaries.
Look at AOC. The guy she ousted was a mainstay of the NY Democratic Party for decades.
If you wait until the general election you get no input.
But that’s not the end of it as this still maintains the binary. First, what are the measures for getting third parties on the ballot? Second, how do we get rid of the fptp system so that we can actually vote for candidates we like, rather than the lesser of two evils?
Edit: I responded too quickly at work, and fixed it up later.
I’m no fan of FPTP, but let’s not put the cart before the horse.
You aren’t going to change the rules for the 2026 primaries.
Concentrate on what is doable.
1000% this. Half our problem is people bitching that their perfect candidate is not an option, and that they don’t want to vote ‘against’ someone.
The time to be active is NOW, not complaining about your choices in October 2028. Left media isn’t helping here, since they want to complain about how the election is still years away and yet we’re talking about potential candidates… YES, we are. If you’re not talking now, then you’re not in the conversation. Is it great to have a 24x365x4 political cycle? hell no. But is it what we have? yes.
Join your local democratic organization and get familiar with how things work. Help choose a ‘not fascist’ candidate for now and push for better down the line.
If you’re here, reading this, and you want things to be better, then you have two choices: vote blue no matter who (ceding your choice to others who are involved), or get involved and be part of the decision of ‘who’ is blue.
We’re nowhere near to it. It has to be a grassroots effort from convincing all of our population it is necessary. Because neither the DNC or the RNC really want it. More parties means they lose power. The DNC pretends to not be opposed, but they undermine third parties all the time. We have to fix first past the post, and neither party is going to help with that.
You push for ranked choice voting initiatives in your state. You grow the party locally, get people into city councils, state legislatures, the house of reps before gunning for the presidency.
We have no third party candidates in the house, an institution with 435 members + some extra non voting ones. There’s a few non-affiliated, but no true third parties. If you can’t get someone in there, you shouldn’t bother wasting time and money on the presidency.
Not by going directly for a moonshot at the presidency. You spend years getting people involved in local politics, then work your way up. State and local governments have power, even if it’s “boring”.
That or a coup or other violent, abrupt, wildcards.
Local government isn’t boring. It’s infuriating. It’s like if you gave the worst HOAs a police force.
Whatever it is, most people don’t engage with it.
I tried to and then realized that they can’t actually help with the main things I want changed, and that they’re just sad little kings of sad little hills.
1.) Federally and statewide, you’ve got to vote for the party that isn’t making Ranked Choice or Star voting illegal, for starters.
2.) Locally, third parties have to actually run local candidates. They are a vanity party otherwise.
If you can’t manage those two things, math & chaos theory guarantees that you’ll never have a 3rd party.
I want Approval Votingand Sequential Proportional Approval Voting, but will support any electoral reform referendum or bill.
And when those get enough name recognition with the electorate, the GOP will start passing bills to make them illegal in red states.
What you need is a Bernie Sanders funding his own political party, then recruit the AOC and likes. Then they constantly for 20 years present on themselves and refuse to compromise with Democrats and call them on their bullshit whatsoever.
But idk why they didn’t do it sad for you
how do we get viable third parties?
By having a third party that’s willing to put in the work and do things the right way.
So, instead of having a do-nothing candidate like Jill Stein who shows up right before every election, then disappears again after only obtaining a half of a single percent of the total votes, we’d have to have a third party that started focusing on winning local/state elections. That would allow them to start having more than ZERO members in the houses of Congress, which is currently the case. And once they have members in Congress, from various districts around the country, then they’d have a real chance at running a presidential candidate who can win.
Make no mistake. Anyone that currently votes for a 3rd party candidate for president is an utter fool. And there are A LOT of them on Lemmy. A 3rd party cannot win. They are nowhere near winning. Because they haven’t put in the work to create a coalition to actually start having a presence in our government.
Don’t neglect that Stein was a Russian plant to spoil the election. Follow the money and Stein’s activities pre and post election.
Yeah, it was pretty obvious.
But whether she was or not, a 3rd party candidate for president can only serve to split votes and increase the possibility of the worst candidate winning. And that will be the case until a 3rd party starts getting serious and getting representatives in Congress.
It’s a literal joke to vote for a 3rd party candidate when they don’t even have reps in either house of Congress. Do the people who vote 3rd party not think about what would happen if one magically won when they have no one from their party in Congress to help achieve their agenda?
Y’all know there’s still house and some Senate elections coming up next year right?
You know what would show America and the Democrats (and Republicans for that matter) that Americans are finally serious about a 3rd party candidate? Supporting and electing 3rd party candidates in the House and Senate.
Ok, I try to be polite, and I generally agree you don’t win arguments by saying shitty things, but whoever downvoted this is either a bad actor or has rocks for brains. I’m sorry to be so crass, but it needed to be said.
If only there were elections being held between 2025 and 2028 with less at stake than a presidential election. That way Americans on the left and right could come together and prove to the establishment parties that they would actually show up to vote for a 3rd party candidate for a presidential election.
It would be such a shame if angry Americans used this information to get involved in local politics and promoted ethical candidates who weren’t purchased by a corporation ASAP
Democrats are dumb enough to think that the main problem is that Americans won’t elect a woman, and won’t try a third time. Then they’ll find someone conservative and claim this is the only way to win over Republicans.
