Democrats: Here’s how Harris can still win!
Bernie, the best president the USA never had.
I fear for her safety. I hope she stays safe.
If only this turn out had actually opposed trump at the polls
Does she mean Democratic National Convention or Democratic National Committee the later being the common thing referred to as DNC?
The National Convention is almost five thousand delegates with a plus one or two. Its not exactly a rally its the body that confirms or votes for the party’s Prez candidate. They have guest, speakers, other elected Democrats(who aren’t delegates), and invite the Press.
I was at the rally! I was one of the last people let inside before they closed the gate, and thousands of people that didn’t get inside watched and listened from outside of the fencing, so the actual number was more than 34,000.
Here’s a photo I took…
And here’s Bernie…
thank you, I’ve managed to identify you now, dispatched ICE agents at your home
I can really see AOC as president. She’s already at the minimum age, but I would like to see her take another 5-10 years to learn how to broaden her appeal.
what do you mean? like get some felonies first?
We don’t have 5-10 years.
Found the project manager.
I’m pretty excited by this AOC/Sanders team up. I’m sure neither are perfect, and will have ideas that I disagree with. But they both have a strong reputation for sticking up for ordinary people rather than the rich and powerful. And no reputation (that I’m aware of!) for bullying, blathering, giving in to the rich, sexual abuse, or miscellaneous awful behaviour.
And a team up between old and young is a powerful thing. Age brings wisdom, to spot things a young person might miss; and youth brings energy, understanding, and new ideas.
AOC for 2028? Judging by other comments, it seems unlikely. But AOC later? If they stay uncompromised, stick to the values that America wants without getting bogged down in things that divide the country, and gather support organically across the country rather than relying on traditional rich-people-funding, this could be an amazing victory!
I agree she would be amazing, but Bernie won’t be around long enough for that team-up. He’s already a year older than Biden. The Dems need to cultivate a lot more younger politicians. They should have been going hard at this years ago.
Sounds like it’s time for you to stand up and get into politics ;-)
You and everyone else here. Can Lemmy find one person from each state to field?
And no reputation (that I’m aware of!) for bullying
Ask Jill Stein about that.
AOC for 2028? Judging by other comments, it seems unlikely.
Well, right now it seems unlikely that Trump will ever leave the White House under any circumstances. I don’t think you properly appreciate what’s going on here. If even a centrist like AOC still makes you go “Hhhmmm, I’m not sure if she’s ready yet…maybe another cycle or two…” while the country dives head-first into fascism, I don’t know what’s going to wake you up. Probably nothing.
As to her age, if she can learn to trust wise people around her, she can do much better than an old person with experience who only sees things their own way! For that reason it might be better to run soon if possible, to have the wisdom of Sanders with her. Hopefully there’s other wise people she trusts to mentior/advise her as well.
Her abilities aren’t the issue, the public’s perception is. I don’t think enough people will accept that she’s been on the scene long enough to be president.
Form a new party!!! Don’t call it Labor or Labour. Don’t call it Green. Don’t call it progressive. Don’t call it socialist or liberal.
Just give it a name that people understand and don’t have preexisting bias against. “For The People”
Take on BOTH the democrats and GOP. Become popular overnight. Keep hammering home it is not about skin colour, race or country of origin, but about the billionaires that aren’t happy with paying no tax and having billions. Make it about the 99%.
It is the only way you’ll get your country back without excessive violence. The two status quo parties are hollowed out from the inside. And both are infiltrated by foreign interests.
That’s what Bernie is saying. He’s calling all progressives to run as Independent, aka No Party Preference, down ballot so we can shove the Corporate DNC into the GOP where they so desperately want to be anyway.
IIRC, he also called for the corpocentrists to get primaried.
“People” = “Communist”
Agreed.
Gotta take a page out of idiocracy here folks.
The Cowboy Party (Named after the most popular/recognizable NFL team)
Or, how about:
The Murica Party
Then you put Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as your president. I’ve had debates about the feasibility of this approach and this is the modern Ronald Reagan play.
Please anyone but “The Turd” he’s just another slimy businessman and will grift this country out of more money.
The cowboys are probably the more at divisive team in the country.
The 99% Party. It’s a slick way of calling it a worker’s party without sounding like a communist party.
The “Do Something” party
The thing is, you can “not call it socialism” all you like. The fact is that it is socialism, you have to respect people’s intelligence enough to know that they will figure that out (or be easily convinced of it, if you really need an argument that doesn’t respect their intelligence). When this happens, and even moreso when you inevitably reveal yourself to be socialist, it will make you look deeply insincere and subversive, because you yourself will have fed into this taboo and not done the work of separating the term from its negative stigma or generating positive media for it.
Socialism is simply the fact of the matter and being socialist means caring about material reality enough to not just lie and gaslight as a means of convincing people. When you get attacked for being socialist, you will not be able to backpedal without sabotaging your own movement, because there will be a litany of evidence that you are socialist. As there should be, or you would not have the support of actual ideological socialists (remember that whole material reality thing I just mentioned).
The material reason why socialism is a “no-no” word is because when the right attacks it, the liberal establishment does what they always do; they backpedal. Not only does this make the right’s criticism look reasonable, because it confirms there is real reason to fear being associated with socialism; but it ensures that the people only ever hear the arguments against socialism, never the arguments for it. All of the arguments which are intrinsically associated with socialism; which you have done all this work to propagate; are never connected to it optically, and the people never learn what it actually is, leaving all of your policy open to attack.
What you are suggesting here is not the solution but exactly the issue that has brought us to this point.
The only way that you will ever launder the term “socialism” is by openly advocating for socialism and calling it what it is when you do. You just aren’t going to beat the establishment at their own game; rather, we must show the people what it is to be respected and hear policy based in material reality that will actually address their needs, and you will win support from across the spectrum.
I disagree. And I don’t mean to preach, but there is a power in words and using them (or not using them). The fight over the word and meaning of socialism is not what “the people” need right now, that can come later. This has been happening in the US closing in on a century. It’s not those tolerant of material reality (as you say) you need to convince, it’s those that would benefit from “the peoples” agenda that don’t acknowledge material reality. Ride the wave of making billionaires pay.
Socialism is a scare word they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20 years.
Socialism is what they called public power. Socialism is what they called social security.
Socialism is what they called farm price supports.
Socialism is what they called bank deposit insurance.
Socialism is what they called the growth of free and independent labor organizations.
Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people.
When the Republican candidate inscribes the slogan “Down With Socialism” on the banner of his “great crusade,” that is really not what he means at all.
What he really means is “Down with Progress–down with Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal,” and “down with Harry Truman’s fair Deal.” That’s all he means.
- Harry Truman
Don’t swim against this right now. These programs from the new deal and fair deal are not even called socialist by American standards anymore.
This quote is an example of what I am talking about though. Roosevelt had to take great strides to ease the great depression, because of mass protest movements at the time openly led by socialist/communist parties, but he could not go so far as to address the economic system that created the great depression. Nor could the capitalist class allow these policies to be associated with the socialists that visibly fought for them. Doing so would threaten the power of capital; this is not long after the bolshevik revolution that created the USSR, so there was major fears of similar movements taking root in the US.
This is not Truman defending the new deal, this is him distancing the new deal from socialism.
The new deal was not socialist, which is by design, but it was made up of things that socialists would have certainly fought for and taken even further if their effort was sincerely meant to achieve socialism.
It’s time to stop letting socialism be used as a scare word. Sure, the loudest ones will continue to bury their heads in the sand, but those people weren’t going to be won over anyways. Furthermore, you aren’t going to win people over by talking down to them, and you cannot address their needs in a sincere manner if your base assumption is that they aren’t intelligent enough to understand their own lives.
edit: I’m also not suggesting that we should be fighting over “the word and meaning of socialism”; precisely the opposite, in fact. I’m saying that we should be living examples of what a socialist is and what socialists advocate for. We should be seen in our communities doing the ground work of organizing and being role models for what we believe in.
The difference between what we are accused of and what we are actually doing is stark, which can’t be pointed out if we’re constantly distancing ourselves from anyone that calls themselves socialist simply because we’re afraid of the word. There is so much present day and past evidence; from the rich history that was erased in the red scare and all of this anti-socialist sentiment; for us to draw on instead of trying to distance ourselves from the reality that what we advocate for is anti-capitalist in nature.
Buddy half of American voters voted for trump. We are well past “insulting their intelligence”. The reality is that the majority of American voters are stupid, lazy, or both.
Separately I don’t think you know what socialism is if you think progressive policies are socialist. Just because “social programs” and socialism share a common word doesn’t mean they are the same thing.
If American voters are as stupid as you claim then it shouldn’t be hard to trick them into changing their vote.
Simultaneously, American voters are “stupid, lazy, or both”, but intelligent and well-read enough to understand what you mean when you explain the difference between social welfare and outright socialism as you are backpedaling on being a socialist.
That being said; I’m not talking about progressive policies, I’m talking about socialism. There might be plenty of progressive policies between here and socialism, but the end of that side of the spectrum is socialism.
Socialism? Americans would be happy to have health care, better workers‘ rights, affordable education. Just like most other advanced economies in Europe, Australia, South Korea, Japan, and so on. That’s not socialism, that’s capitalism with regulations and social programs. Nobody really wants socialism, which was as utter failure everywhere it was tried.
Anywhere socialism has existed, it has done so under the threat of global capitalism which is led by the United States. The countries you listed are only able to maintain their wealth and relative comfort by taking advantage of the global south. They benefit from obscuring that relationship so that the people who see that benefit, don’t have to reckon with the extent of it and how it enables the oppression of all of us and holds us back as a whole.
Today, the global North drains from the South commodities worth $2.2 trillion per year, in Northern prices. For perspective, that amount of money would be enough to end extreme poverty, globally, fifteen times over.
Over the whole period from 1960 to today, the drain totalled $62 trillion in real terms. If this value had been retained by the South and contributed to Southern growth, tracking with the South’s growth rates over this period, it would be worth $152 trillion today.
These are extraordinary sums. For the global North (and here we mean the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, Japan, Korea, and the rich economies of Europe), the gains are so large that, for the past couple of decades, they have outstripped the rate of economic growth. In other words, net growth in the North relies on appropriation from the rest of the world.
Let me give you the quick and dirty, oversimplified rundown of how that relationship plays out:
Power, under capitalism, resides in capital, which isn’t just money but also resources and property. In order to maintain power, capitalism requires infinite and continuous growth, which of course requires more and more resources to sustain.
Say a given country decides it would like to own its resources nationally and use the wealth generated by those resources to support the growth and welfare of their own people. Capitalist nations are able to wield state power against those countries whenever they encounter this sort of difficulty. This includes leveraging state and capitalist media to run propaganda campaigns, which sour public perception of that country’s national leadership; funding coups and covert operations against them; giving money and training to militant minority resistance groups; and when all else fails, all out war, while messy, is a very lucrative means to the end of converting the resources of global south nations into private capital for the global north.
This capital is then wielded within the capitalist world to manipulate political outcomes in favor of the private owners of capital and to prevent the working class from gaining the consciousness that would enable them to struggle for the things you mentioned; health care, worker’s rights, affordable education; as they slowly strip away what was won from past struggles.
I believe this lovely quote by Ella Baker, a major activist and leader behind the civil rights movement, is relevant to the conversation;
A nice gathering like today is not enough. You have to go back and reach out to your neighbors who don’t speak to you. And you have to reach out to your friends who think they are making it good. And get them to understand that they–as well as you and I–cannot be free in America or anywhere else where there is capitalism and imperialism. Until we can get people to recognize that they themselves have to make the struggle and have to make the fight for freedom every day in the year, every year until they win it.
Not very practical while the US voting system is still first-post-the-post. Y’all need to fix that first.
Unless it really works like it has the potential to. Then the repugs and dems would be totally cooked.
Don’t worry about getting it right 100% perfect in the planning phase, the important thing is to just get fucking moving. If either trying to shake up the democrats or forming a third party end up being wrong, then learn from it and keep moving. We can’t afford to miss the launch window because we couldn’t agree that the plan was perfect.
The “We can’t do this because it doesn’t solve 100% of our problems” excuse.
Yeah, I’ve noticed that about the left in general, that the perfect is always the enemy of the good. Meanwhile the right’s out there like “yeah, a lot of you are going to die, but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make”.
give it a name that people understand and don’t have preexisting bias against. “For The People”
I’m pretty sure that name (or similar) has been used in ways that… don’t sit very well with people!
EverForward Party
Onward Together Party
Inspired Collaboration Party
Positive Frontier Party
Ones I like after going on a Thesaurus and US Declaration of Independence wiki hole. The ones further below are just ones I thought were okay as they came to me.
===========
People’s Voice Party
American Party
Workers Party
Freedom Party
Citizens Party
Peoples Party
Revolutionary Party
Common Party
United Party
==============
Workers Party
Blue Collar Party
Trades Party
Skilled Party
Collar Party
Rust Party
American Party
Freedom Party
Citizen’s Party
Liberty Party
People’s Party
Civil Party
Center Party
Working Party
99 Party
99% Party
Luigi Party
Rights Party
Blue Party
United Party
Sovereign Party
Human Party
Marching Party
US Party
Founding Party
Founders Party
National Party
Revolutionary Party
Colonial Party
Fundamental Party
Common Sense Party
People’s Choice Party
People’s Voice Party
Laws of Nature Party
Nature Party
Equal Party
Pursuit of Happiness Party
Standing Party
Family Party
Native Party
Great Party
Fighting Party
Party in the USA
Let’s get this Party started
Party Animal
Birthday Party
The Party Party
Don’t don’t don’t split the vote. Not even Trump was that stupid.
Dems are managing to split the vote all on their own it seems
It’s already split. If Democratic party runs another centrist/neoliberal candidate it will continue to be split. There is no indication that they’ll run anyone left of kamala.
Now’s the time.
Workers Party
Blue Collar Party
Trades Party
Skilled Party
Collar Party
Rust Party
American Party
Freedom Party
Citizen’s Party
Liberty Party
People’s Party
Civil Party
Center Party
The Freedom party
The Justice Party
I like Freedom Party, take that word back.
The Individualist Party
Bernie is already third party, doofus. And if you want to fix anything you have to vote DNC.
Go baby go!
It’s working kids - despite the blackout from the mass media, people are taking to the streets:
That line should be way higher than in 2017… that gives me less hope than more tbf
Why is 2017 the point of comparison?
Trump’s first term vs second term.
Comparing to the first Trump Term, I’d assume.
They need to organized this momentum into a proper party, maybe call it the labor party or the progress party. But most importantly they need to not be scared to use actural leftist rhetoric and appeal to class conscious workers.
What about Working Families party?
Tbh I dont really take them seriously
Onward Together Party
EverForward Party
Inspired Collaboration Party
Positive Frontier Party
Disagree. There are a huge number of republican working class that need representation, and who are not the enemy.
The anti-1% party is a much more viable proposition than going left vs right.
Like Democrats, many Republicans are just voting for the “lesser evil” and aren’t really loyal to their party. They just hate Democrats.
A new party sidesteps and allows those “lesser evil” Republican working class voters to jump ship. They will not ever vote for a Democrat, so stop being Democrats.
This idea is so simple, and the idea of it changing the course of history would be such a dumb-timeline thing, that I am 100% convinced it would work.
It would give them the ability to talk some harsh shit on Democrats, which could work on some Republicans. But I’d still worry that the effectiveness of their propaganda machine and the tendency of conservatives to fall in line and do as they’re told would spoil it.
Anti-1% is left vs right
I don’t believe this is true, the right won the last election but people outside the 1% voted for Trump.
You don’t have to be the 1% to vote for them.
Leftism literally originates from replacing monarchy and aristocracy with democracy, fighting the 1% is leftism.
The Democrats tried that, they tried appealing to the mythical “centrist conservative” and look where that got them, it has been proven to be a failing strategy. We dont need another “bipartisan” Democrat-like party, we need a workers party.
I’m trying to say that process is made by classifying voters in terms other than left/center/right.
There are only two political classes, those who are class conscious and those who are not. It matters not what word they’re called, only that as many people became class conscious as possible.
I can’t disagree with your definition, but I can’t believe people who are not class conscious always vote republican.
Sometimes they vote Democrat
Bernie is already third party
Why does nobody know anything about American Politics, including the Americans…
He’s independent, meaning no party
Because hundreds of millions of dollars are spent to make real information seem as confusing and boring as possible
Now, this? This is hilarious right here.
If Bernie was 20 or 30 years younger, AOC and him would smash the fucking Government of Putin.
Trump and gang is trying to have AOC charged for terrorism, so it seems to be working. She should either get DNC leadership now or finally form her own party.
Yup. Ideally she takes over and redirects and repairs the burning husk that is the dems. It they don’t give her leadership splintering with bernie would be a godsend
Please don’t let her form a new party. As much as people say they hate the 2-party system, fragmenting the Democratic Party would be a yuge mistake at this point. We need to let the Trumpublican Party eat itself when he keels over from dementia or his final Big Mac Attack. The MAGA opportunists who rode in on his coattails will tear each other to pieces as they claw for position like rats.
The maga problem isn’t just Trump. This is the culmination of decades of work by christo-fascist conservatives. They’re not resting on their laurels and lining their pockets like a normal regressive administration. Every effort is being taken to solidify their power and deconstruct any threat that might rise up post-trump. Even if they did eat themselves there won’t be a government to rebuild.
We’re passing an inflection point in American politics. People want change and polls indicate they don’t care what side it comes from. The Democratic party has never polled lower. Being the milquetoast neoliberal corporate party is objectively the worst anchor to tie around your neck.
AOC and Bernie’s message isn’t wildly popular on accident. That energy needs to be captured and amplified, Democratic party or not. What’s the worst that happens from a split ticket? More people stay home?
Edit: you don’t even have to run against them to capture the Democratic party. Just have headliner progressives threaten it with a broad show of support and you force them to open up the primaries. Their policies have no support, they have no chips to call the bluff.
A Trump presidency, let alone TWO, wouldn’t have been possible without the gradual dumbing down of Americans over the last century, which IMO is an unintended side effect of progressive addiction to entertainment and convenience. Nobody conspired to make people more stupid by getting them to watch too much TV. That happened as business people strove to sell more products and get richer, like always.
Conspiring to make and keep people stupid is a conservative top 10 hit. For them the ideal populace is homogenous, fertile, docile, fearful and uneducated.
Anti-intellectual attacks have been the go-to for centuries, they’ve just gotten more modern and efficient. Look into groups like the heritage foundation, prager u, the heartland institute and (most importantly) the people bankrolling them.
Its a long legacy of chipping away at the foundations of democracy and critical thinking. Blaming technology and the free market is buying their propaganda. It’s the same lie they use to frame climate collapse as an unavoidable natural cycle.
The Democratic party’s plans, laid bare: Do nothing and wait for everyone to notice how awesome they are.
The worst part is that Republicans unironically believe that these are all paid actors.
How can I sign up for that job?
Digging into who is actually paying them is a fun road to go down as well. They can’t answer. When the democrats were in charge, they’d be paid for by the government!
Now that Trump is in charge, they can’t say that anymore! So they’ll move onto another scapegoat such as Bill Gates, or NASA (and ignore that NASA gets funds from the government).
I don’t think facts or lack of evidence has ever gotten in their way before. They will just say it’s George Soros. Or they will point to fake craigslist posts which can be created by anyone.
Even then, I feel like you could just say “Oh, great, so now that Trump’s in charge, he can investigate George Soros’ finances, right?”
They can say George Soros or Bill Gates, pretty common namedrops on conservative media.
“It was fauci and the chemtrails”
Cool. So what policy changes did they enact? None? Then who gives a fuck?
Action, not words, AOC. Action, not words, Bernie. Fucking stfu and DO something.
Getting their base energized and angry about the current situation is doing a lot more than introducing a bill that has a 0.00% chance of getting passed. The chances of them talking to the high ranking party officials and getting them to reverse course probably has the same chance of success.
It helps to use your brain to actually think about the outcomes of actions. On the off chance that I’m just being an asshole, please let me know what is a better use of their time.
“introducing a bill that has a 0.00% chance of getting passed” is Bernie’s function.
So he can look like the real leftist who is really trying.Litmus tests for the rottenness of our overlords
what have you been doing? besides typing on a keyboard at people
Have you ever met this buddy of mine?
That poor Bill, brought into the world because @MisterOwl thinks it’s better to have a useless, irrelevant stack of paper then to start solidifying a base of people to act as the real opposition party.
We gotta put all our energy into what they’re doing. They’re the rare few on the left that really understand what is going on and how to start fighting it.
You’re right, but consider how poisonous those names have been made to conservatives. Their ears automatically clamp shut.
Know the jacked up part? If conservatives listened to either one of those two, without knowing who they were, they would be all ears.
First time I heard Bernie was on NPR, had no idea who was talking, but I gathered it was a politician running for office. (This was him running against Hillary.)
“LOL, this guy is a joke. You can’t actually answer questions honestly and in a straightforward manner. Holy shit! He just answered a question about Israel without mumbling around. Fucking love him, but whatever he’s running for, he’s going to lose.”
Yeah.
Some of MAGA actually likes Bernie though. A number of them would have voted for him and he would have almost certainly won.
