The victories were a clear rebuke of Trump’s politics, but also a referendum on the Democratic party’s own centrism that is complicit in the violence of masked men hunting immigrants, the funding of a genocide and the denial of healthcare to citizens of the world’s wealthiest country.
…Hakeem Jeffries, who is running for speaker of the House, will not commit to holding a vote on abolishing ICE. He opposes Medicare for All. He has said he will not hold Trump accountable for the human rights violations committed, portraying it as a question of “getting even” rather than achieving justice where it was denied. Chuck Schumer, who holds similar positions, has an extraordinarily low approval rating – yet plans to run for majority leader in the Senate. Electeds are questioning whether these men should hold these roles.
But the dissent must also come from us, as it has been. We need to demand an end to the fast violence of guns on our streets trained on our neighbors, bombs dropped from the sky and the slow violence of people dying because their healthcare was denied or their food stamps were cut.
We need to organize, and mobilize, to demand the multi-racial democracy we were promised – not a playground for the rich to get richer on the time and labor and lives of the poor.
There’s a superseding point. The fearmongering works because the electorate is uninformed and misinformed by megaphones of fearmongering from conservative billionaire megaphones and erosion of education and diversification of media. Yes, we should’ve stuck with FDR’s New Deal approach and his desire for a Second Bill of Rights. But the Business Plot 2 (Reagan) and 3 (Trump) won – especially with aid from foreign interference most notably Russia and Israel but possibly China too.
This makes those who try to do the right thing less palatable to the masses because Fox News & Friends is telling them that any leftist is the literal devil.
Not an easy task to overcome, but tell me a viable path for how we put a Mamdani, AES, AOC in Arkansas and Alabama and I’ll listen.
Just a note on the FDR comment - I love history, not an expert in the details, but most of FDR’s deals dried up and were discontinued because at the time it seemed their need was done. WWII made unemployment practically disappear, and much of what FDR did was to try and give jobs to everyone. A lot of the rest went away once liberal Republicans (Eisenhower) got taken into the Democrat side as Dixiecrats planned their takeover. Reagan was the first major result of that move, and it took over the country fast since businesses loved it.
If people did not notice their lives getting worse due to failure of liberal a lot of them will not fall into the propaganda that immigrants are the source of all problems. Instead of understanding the root causes and try to solve it people like prefer to complain about regular people ans whitewash the liberals failures leading to more people voting for fascism
The more progressives that respect their engagement wins , the more it will be easier to win in harder places
That didn’t stop conservatives whose lives continue to get worse voting for Republicans in Arkansas and Alabama, so I’m not understanding your point?
I’m 100% all for getting more progressives in office, fully embrace a Social Democratic Nordic Model — but I’m still not seeing this viable path to actually getting even a liberal let alone a progressive candidate on the ballot and to vote for in the likes of Arkansas and Alabama.
And are you American? I see you moderate Europe, so perhaps there is a disconnect in one’s understanding of our electoral system and the breadth, depth, and pulse of this nation and its particular states’ electoral makeup.
Conservatives always wins after the democrats and worldwide liberals centrists fail. Look at France, le pen has big chance of being next president after Macron centrism failed and led to civil disobedience. It took
I’ve already acknowledged agreement of the problem; the question is implementation of a solution. If I could magically snap my fingers and put a Mamdani, AES, AOC, Talarico in every single seat in government, I would.
But again the forces of money and how poorly educated the electorate is means sometimes persuasion to vote for a better candidate doesn’t come in time, and then we must choose between Center-Right and Far-Right because the electorate only voted for these two choices, given the paradigm I laid out in my original comment.
We are not agreeing though you think money and poor education is what make conservatives wins while I think it is liberalism failures that create that reality. I don’t know how you still talk about the force of money when people outspent by 9 times still wins. Nothing happen in a snap of a finger. People used to say Americans would never elect a Black president. People like you said America would never elect an openly pro-Palestine candidate, yet Mamdani won the mayorship. Then people like you moved the goalposts to winning a senate seat, and once again, you were proven wrong. It took 94 years for Democrats to win again in Kansas. I think nothing is impossible when people who already vote decide to vote for change instead of being defeatists. The more that people who already vote, vote the right way, the more people who never voted will start voting, slowly but surely.
But my aforementioned point that went entirely ignored disproves your argument: People vote for conservatives over and over, even though it fails to create that reality even faster.
… Which means there’s more to the story in persuasion of the electorate, and people duped into voting against their own interest.
Ergo, the fearmongering. Ergo the money. Ergo the propaganda and megaphones of misinformation.
Yes, Democrats won Kansas, but it wasn’t a progressive who won it. They’re just a stepping-stone along the way to the progressivism which you and I both seek.
Please don’t put words in my mouth. I supported Obama from primaries, and I supported Mamdani. I was one of the earliest supporters and campaigners for Bernie in 2015, but still voted Hillary when it was her or Trump at the end. I feel one has strawmanned me for positions I’ve never taken.
The electoral college is a problem for those states, but if that can be tackled, two of Alabama’s districts fell to blue this time, and one of Alabama’s got reasonably close, mostly because of urban Little Rock’s votes.
Rural is going to vote red until they realize, through years of results and through educational messaging, that Republicans aren’t going to ever help them.
Yeah I absolutely believe from here through 2028 the most progressive members of the coalition should be going to these places – kind of how AOC and Bernie reached out to rural voters in West Virginia this past cycle.
It’s the only way to make inroads and to short-circuit the onslaught of money and propaganda that comes from their televisions, social media algorithms, and churches.
My only point is that there comes a point when you must make a choice between two non-ideal candidates, and take what you will. I’m doubting these candidates had the most progressive platforms in the general election, but hey, they did elect their first open trans state legislator (I assume that’s a gerrymandered district, much how Maxwell Frost can win uncontested in FL).