[dude with glasses in a communist t-shirt, arguing] I’m the only leftist here, your opinions are TRASH
[dude holding a theory book on smug, arguing] Read theory you losers, you’re all WRONG
[dude in an anarchist hoodie, arguing] Nuh-uh, I’m the only leftist here, you’re SHITLIBS
[the three dudes are now caught in a cartoon fight, glasses gone flying, punches everywhere, while a firing squad of nazis are targeting them with rifles]
[a confused nazi asks] Why… why are they still arguing?
A thumb on the scale wouldn’t really matter if we were united. They put their thumb on the scale with Mamdani and he won anyway.
Because primary turnout is something like 15% of eligible voters, who are disproportionately old and “centrist”.
I’m not saying that this is false, I’m just saying it wouldn’t matter if we quit the infighting, rallied behind a good prospect, and actually showed up to vote for them as the Democratic candidate.
He won a primary but has yet to win the election. This is the same party that also produced Trump supporter Adams and sleazebag Cuomo. The same party that just ousted recently elected party leaders for wanting to primary candidates like Adams and Cuomo with candidates like Mamdani. They’ve demonstrated time and time again that they’d rather have someone like Trump win than allow someone like Mamdani to take office and that’s what he’ll be facing in the general election.
Because people have been beaten down with the same club for so long that they’ve given up. I can say with almost certainty that a majority of people these days are just voting against the other candidate rather than voting for someone, so how do you build a coalition of people behind someone in an environment like that? You don’t.
I completely agree that’s possible in theory but then it brings us back to square one where the DNC won’t give them any support, puts out attack ads about how they’re “too radical,” excludes them from debates, and corporate media gives them no coverage. You’re asking for a machine to produce a product that isn’t wanted by the people actually running the machine.
People here and on Reddit will tell you election after election that it’s on you to compromise and meet these right-wing Democrats where they stand. That “now is not the right time,” that you should “vote blue no matter who,” that “everything is on the line this time” as these very same candidates lose election after election. If you argue with them you’re just met with a bunch of thought-terminating cliches like “bOtH SiDeS” or “Russian plant” and treated as a scapegoat for not compromising to their disgusting and ineffective values, meanwhile they act like said loser candidate was “the best option” in hindsight despite the fact that they lost yet again.
At this point I’d be perfectly happy to throw the Democratic party in the incinerator alongside the Republican party and just starting over from scratch. They only exist at this point to act as controlled opposition and kayfabe to give the appearance of two opposing sides.
My whole point was about primaries, but even still he’s polling well in the lead. If he wins will you admit that it can be done?
Okay, what’s your point? That the same population that’s too apathetic to vote in a primary are going to what, pick up arms and take to the streets? Organize behind and promote a minority party? How do you plan to build a coalition behind an objectively more difficult and unlikely strategy? You don’t.
Mamdani, and several other leftist candidates have been running exceptionally successful grassroots campaigns through social media and hitting the streets. We live in the information age, viral community-driven campaigns have the potential to reach more people than legacy media. And again, what alternative do you propose that will face less corporate opposition? You think the DNC is going to stay silent on third party candidates competing for their votes? You think corporate media is going to stay silent on any attempt at actual revolution? If the machine is so powerful, what action are you suggesting that can actually overcome it?
So long as elections in this country are FPTP, and leftists don’t show up to primaries, and Republicans keep pushing Christo-fascism, then they are correct that it is the best option. Splitting the anti-Republican vote just helps the Republicans, and by extension the Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society. Personally, I’d rather have a Neo-Liberal government than a Christian Nationalist one, and there aren’t any other options right now.
No disagreement here, but where’s the incinerator and the power to throw them in it? If I had a magic wand that I could wave to erase both parties, I would. But I don’t have that kind of magic wand, and neither do you. We have to operate in the environment we actually exist in. Idealism doesn’t get us any closer to material change. Voting against the worst option is the best choice we have at the polls, until we can get seriously organized. Serious organization takes a lot of time and effort. Ignoring the material present for a vague idealist future is a massive strategic blunder.
It’s a lot harder to organize as a political prisoner in a concentration camp.
Winning a primary doesn’t mean much if the party crushes you in the general. I hope he wins and I would be happy to admit I was wrong if he makes it and actually lives up to his word once in office.
My point is that you’re advocating for people to try and fix the system from within the broken system itself. Democratic and Republican primaries are completely controlled by these two private organizations not some overarching organization, people, or law. It’s naive to think that you can somehow outplay the DNC (or RNC) leadership at a game they crafted and rigged themselves. It’s like thinking you can outplay the house at a casino if you just use the right strategy. Even if you do somehow find a winning strategy, they’ll just refuse to pay you, take you into the backroom, beat your ass, and then have police come haul you out for trespassing because the house always wins. You won’t get better candidates by picking from the handful of predetermined candidates that the DNC offers you in their primary race whether 15% vote or 100% vote.
I don’t know what the ‘correct’ approach is but I know it isn’t this. Perhaps some actual grassroots organizations can put something together or an existing third party can take their placr, but regardless of what it is, it’s not going to be something internal to these organizations, it has to come from the outside.
No I dont think the DNC or corporate media will ignore these events, they’ll come out swinging like they did in 2008 with the Occupy Wall Street protests. They’ll paint these outsiders as kooks and extremists and make them look like a joke on TV and the internet. You speak about the information age as if everyone is somehow more enlightened than generations past, yet we see people as a whole getting dumber and less informed as time goes on. We see the powerful using social media to spread a bunch of lies and disinformation. We see the truth being cast aside or drowned in a bunch of noise.
How are these people “the best option” in hindsight when we know for a fact that they lost the election? I find statements like this so utterly insane. You’re referring to the very people that we unquestionably know weren’t the best option by virtue of them losing these elections to a buffoon. This party of “the best options” were so ‘good’ that the Republicans control the entire government now.
This is just the “vote blue no matter who” mentality i previously referred to phrased another way. Neo-Liberal governments have driven us to this point alongside the Christian Nationalists. They’re both responsible for this and they’re the ones determining the options we have. I legitimately cannot understand how someone like yourself can agree that we have terrible options while simultaneously arguing that we need to support the people determining said options. It’d be like going to a grocery store filled with rancid food and telling yourself that you need to choose something off the shelf because that particular store left you no other options. Why would you do that? Why reward that store with your hard earned money? It’s such incredibly closed-minded behavior that harms your own self interests and not only are you advocating that you should shop there personally, but everyone else should too.
The incinerator is your vote and what you decide to do with it. The environment we exist in isn’t limited to these two private parties. That’s just what they want you to believe. Sacrificing your ideals just to be disappointed and have things get worse because neo-liberals don’t serve the American people isnt going to bring material change either. Doing the same thing every election isnt going to bring about change. Constantly “voting against the worst option” just means the next worse option can safely ignore you and refuse to improve things because they have you convinced that they’re your only choice and therefore have no accountability to anyone. I’d argue that someone in your position is “ignoring the material present for some vague idealistic future.” You think if the Dems can just win this next election they’ll turn things around and eventually the Republicans will scurry off somewhere, but we’ve seen numerous times that even with a Democratic supermajority, they have no interest in fixing things and Republicans aren’t going anywhere because they’re doing the exact same thing to their base.
And regardless of which party wins any given election, we’ve been steadily approaching that reality with each passing day. Seems like a great wakeup call that some actual change is needed, no?
He’s beating every other candidate combined in the polls.
Then what winning strategy do you recommend, and can it be implemented before midterms?
This is the crux of it. I’m advocating imperfect but immediately implementable actions, and you’re fighting that to remain pure for “Perhaps some actual grassroots organizations” doing something at some point in the future.
You can do both. A bandage doesn’t heal a wound, but it keeps you from bleeding out long enough to get to the hospital. We’re a long long way from the hospital, and you’re refusing first aid.
And you see truth coming out and spreading like wildfire. Social media is a tool. You can leverage it with money, or you can leverage it with numbers. We’ve got them beat on the numbers.
Because the options are Democrat, Republican, or third party. A perfect third party with no chance of success is a bad option. Policy doesn’t mean anything if you stand no chance of winning. So it’s really a binary choice, and whichever one is less bad is by definition the best.
Because we’re bleeding out. A dirty t-shirt as a makeshift tourniquet is a terrible medical option, but it sure as hell beats bleeding out. Stop focusing on historical-scale problems, since the ones in front of you RIGHT NOW. The best hospital in the world is useless to you if you bleed out before it’s built.
And when you’re a smattering of third party voters, that “incinerator” is a matchbook.
Functionally it is. That’s what the math proves. This has been extensively studied. Parties can change, but as long as the mechanics of the election stay the same, it will always be a choice between the two biggest parties.
I do not. I think that building a grassroots coalition takes years, even decades. I think that the Republicans are an immediate existential threat to that kind of coalition, and do-nothing Democrats aren’t. I think it’s a lot easier to plan a revolution when your vanguard hasn’t been abducted by the gestapo.
What? No we haven’t. We approached that reality like a rocket after inauguration day. This is a dramatic, breakneck acceleration, directly tied to one party. It’s ridiculous to suggest otherwise. This is not a serious statement, I can’t have a discussion with someone that divorced from reality.
Yeah, just like the last couple dozen wakeup calls over the last century. Until you’ve got the army to back up your plans, maybe let people address immediate threats in peace, and help them out while you build the resources and influence to IMPLEMENT your big plan. You’re no different than the worker voting red because when they’re a billionaire they’ll want tax cuts for their private jet.
It’s a tunnel they get into. Fascism is bad but the DNC is worse.
I complain about the DNC all the time, follow local races, and donate to them. But some segments of the world can’t even imagine national party politics not being the source of all evil.