He has caught the ire of many congressional Democrats with his plans to try to oust veteran Democratic lawmakers through his PAC, Leaders We Deserve…
What’s weird (to me) is I got an email from this group, but it was in the (at least implied) context of replacing veteran Republican lawmakers. Which, yeah, sure - but they can do that without my help (or dollars).
Yeah, between that & the Abundance Caucus, I’m not feeling as much love* for the Democratic Party as I did, say, last week.
*i.e. “I love not voting a fascist,” or more generally “I’d love it if I don’t lose my keys today,” “I’d love it if you stopped letting your dog shit in my yard” etc.
The message that voters got in the 2024 election wasn’t about Biden being progressive, it was:
that he was not handling Israel/Palestine very well
that his health was failing, and everyone was urging him to drop out (or fighting about it) and that Democrats were in disarray
that the economy was bad (it wasn’t overall, but there was inflation… and a continuing rise in inequality, which only actual leftists seem to care about)
And then the election wasn’t really about Biden, but Harris – the 11th hour substitute candidate, who progressives didn’t like much… but it wasn’t a lack of progressive votes that caused her to lose. I find it much more likely that it was misogynists and racists.
At any rate, the problem now is not Biden or Harris. It’s that:
Democratic congresspeople are not doing enough to resist Trump / Project 2025 / etc. Some of them aren’t even paying lip service to resistance, just normalizing the fascism and incompetence. Others are making weak noises of protest out of one side of their mouth and then voting with them on the other side.
some Democratic politicians have decided that the only way to win is to move farther to the right (again) and appeal to the MAGA crowd while continuing to screech “vote blue no matter who!” at progressives
Well it’s neither of those things. It’s also not directed at you, or anyone else who has held their nose and voted for uninspiring and ineffective Democrats. It’s directed at people who voted 3rd party/voted for Republicans/didn’t vote because their one pet issue wasn’t addressed adequately. It represents the same kind of magical thinking as MAGA who think ivermectin works to fight COVID vs masks and vaccines to think we don’t operate within a 2 party system and somehow their protest vote/no vote sends any kind of message other than they can’t be bothered to do the work needed within that reality.
That’s not what I wrote. I’d ask that you not put words in my mouth. I wrote the opposite, that we should all be speaking out about the ways Democratic politicians have failed us - but as individuals, not as a party. Short of a total revolution, the only vehicle we have out of this mess is the Democratic Party, so it’s far more important to fix it than complain about it. Let’s assemble the parts we need for it to work like we want and throw out the ones that aren’t working. There’s no other vehicle waiting to get us where we need to go.
I don’t feel like that’s fair, either. Describing the genocide in Gaza as a “pet issue” is pretty unfair. And I know Trump is worse on that issue, but I can’t be pissed at people who had a problem with how Harris addressed that issue. And I mean it 100% when I say that if the Democrats nominate Gavin Newsom in 2028, I will not be voting Democrat. They will have proved to me that they are unwilling to change or solve real problems.
I mean, my brain is kind of hard-wired at this point to see things as systems, because we do live within systems and function within systems. And yes individuals make up those systems, but the ones who have the greatest amount of power within the systems known as the Democratic party have greater power to shape what the Democratic party, as a system, actually does. They have greater power than us to marginalize particular viewpoints or people, and to shape the policies that they pursue. It’s very hard not to see that as a systemic failure of the Democratic party that goes back to the third wayism of the 90s under Clinton. As long as those of that mindset dominate that party, they are going to continue the third way, bipartisan way of approaching governance, and putting bipartisanship ahead of keeping particular groups safe. Just look at what Newsom is doing out in CA… are you really suggesting that he has less power as a democratic politician than random lawmakers from working class communities in the state legislature? Of course he doesn’t! He has MORE power than random lawmakers. He’s a defacto leader of the CA Democrats, because he is the governor, along with their Senators and people like Pelosi. They are failing all of us by demanding we all throw trans people, the homeless, the environment under the fucking bus and work amiable with a fascist party…
If it’s that easy for people to believe lies, then there’s not much hope. But I think we are in a moment right now where people who were phoning it in and believing the misinformation are waking up and paying more attention because of how it’s affected them directly to have an incompetent administration.
I mostly agree, though there is not a small group who believed the misinformation. Harris being a last-minute replacement was specifically to leverage the successes of the Biden administration - which people ignored, apparently.
And that’s my point. NAME NAMES. Because making generic statements like that doesn’t help. It doesn’t help change the party to what we need and it hurts the Democratic politicians who actually are fighting back. If you aren’t willing to do that, you aren’t doing any resistance, either.
I’ll list the Democratic politicians who are actively fighting back and how they are doing so.
My representative, Maxine Dexter, flew with other Democrats to El Salvador, a T****-aligned dictatorship, putting herself at risk, in order to work directly to free Kilmar Abrego Garcia and the other US immigrants who were illegally sent there.
One of my senators, Jeff Merkley, has referred multiple T**** administration officials for investigation for both insider trading and perjury.
I’ll add more as I find them, but I’ll do so elsewhere. This thread just appears to be reserved for griping instead of doing anything productive. It’s important to be able to vent, but let’s not pretend is actually accomplishes anything.
Agreed. Beau’s buss ride analogy applies. You get on a bus in Key West. You are headed for Seattle. The guy beside you is headed for Tampa. But for now, you are going in the same direction. Dems come in varying degrees of “leftiness.” Fuck the ones who cannot see that fascists can’t be compromised with, but for the rest, sort it out if we survive the next 3 years. (Or get past Tampa, in the analogy.)
Yes, but the bus and where it’s going still matters. You can’t ignore the direction it’s taking, from Key West, to Tampa and eventually to Seattle. The bus is the system and if person going to Tampa demands a short cut through Klan Country, which puts everyone on that bus who is not liked by the Klan in danger, then that’s a problem. And if the people in charge of the direction that they bus is going believes it makes sense to take that short cut to pick up some Klansman who want some social programs, that puts people who the Klan doesn’t like in even more dangers, because now those klansman are on the bus…
Do you? Because this is not what I see from my vantage point so I’m sincerely curious. Like on Reddit I see some articles posted here and there from like CNN or MSNBC that are like “big regret everywhere.” But I don’t see it in any real people I meet leading me to suspect it is PR bots and grifty infotainment selling schadenfreude and nothing more?
But in reality if anything people seem… either complacent, content, or completely disillusioned to the point of giving up.
Yeah, for every immigrant who regrets voting for Trump because her husband just got deported to Cuba, there are at least a thousand Trump supporters who are perfectly happy about that.
And another thousand white tech bros with newly imported wives who know they are safe and can have a laugh at it all now that they don’t have to pretend to be “woke” anymore.
Rather the opposite. Look at how many people are showing up to town halls and literally screaming and chanting at their representatives. Here, we overflowed a large gymnasium with people telling our local representative what we need - and she’s been doing it!
Look at the town halls in republican districts where they are getting yelled at by their Republican constituents. And when they won’t do town halls anymore, Democrats are holding them in their stead. Look at how well AOC & Bernie’s rallies across the country are attended. Again, standing room only or overflowed even when they are in sportsball stadiums.
And that’s part of my point. One effect of attributing all the ills of Democrats like Schumer to the party overall is to take hope away from people. If there’s one thing we need more than ever, it’s hope. The other thing we need is purpose. Complaining doesn’t achieve anything. What do we want to DO? Focus on what we want to accomplish and the steps we need to take to get there.
I know very well what I want. And I want the Dems to want that as much as I want it and fight for it or I don’t want to keep enabling them with their fucking “hope” addiction.
Like if there was a party of Republicans who wanted to improve health services and rights for women I would 100% switch parties that day.
And me… women like me… have NO place in politics. I can’t run. I’m unelectable. I’m dirty. Impure. Not pretty enough and most importantly… not a man. My god I even have a voice and laugh and have had sex with a man before… and my father was of low birth.The only place where a dirty ruined childless worthless hick white trash old woman like me even has a chance of doing anything meaningful in politics is as a MAGA Republican.
Really think about that because it is true.
So there’s your fucking purity test too. I can’t do much more myself than that.
What I’ve been doing has just wasted time and money and put me on a list at Palantir.
I think that’s an oversimplification. I’ve given you very specific issues I feel the party as a whole have failed me and the rest of us on, and there’s more of those than I’ve mentioned in my posts. (I really am trying not to ramble too much.) There’s more than “one pet issue” at stake for many of us. Dismissing our concerns as simplistic, petulant temper tantrums does nothing to address the problems, and creates distance and division where solidarity is needed.
How exactly are we supposed to do that when progressive voices in the party are silenced, punished and primaried out by The Powers That Be in the DNC? They’ve made it clear they don’t care about us and our priorities, they aren’t listening to us-- and some are actively advocating for more Republican-Lite strategies in the Party’s platform. To me, the “magical thinking” is believing they still have our interests at heart, because there’s too much evidence to the contrary. And while we do (at least theoretically) have a two-party system, it’s not the same two parties we used to have. Parties that failed to change with the times and respond to their voters have withered, died, and been replaced by others. Maybe it’s time to replace the Democrats with something else. (Yeah, that’s a long-term goal and we need to fight now, but again, I don’t feel like the resistance needs to be strictly DemocraticTMally-branded. It’s going to take more of us than just those who call themselves Democrats to win back our country and our freedom.)
Even so, I’m not saying “don’t vote for Democrats” or “don’t work with them when possible.” I’m willing to do that, even though I no longer consider myself a Democrat at all… but they have to prove themselves to me, that they can and will do what we need them to do, because I no longer have any faith in the Democratic label. They’ve broken too many promises for me to automatically trust them just because they have a D next to their name.
Who brought up the pony?
>sigh< I don’t really think we’re all that far off in where we stand. We both want solidarity in the fight. I feel like the point of contention is party loyalty, and we’re just not going to agree on that. We can’t fix the things that need to be fixed if we aren’t allowed to identify them and openly call them out for what they are. I’m not going to stop talking about the problems I see in the Party just because it might possibly depress somebody else’s vote; if they’re old enough to cast a ballot, they’re old enough to do their research and make their own choices, and what they do with it is their responsibility, not mine.
That’s a huge part of my point! We are stuck with this broke-ass two-party system that wildly favors money over people. The only path we have short of getting rid of that system entirely (a.k.a. Revolution) is to fix it. So pick a vehicle: Democrat or Republican. There isn’t another option. Pretending there is equals magical thinking in our current political reality. I personally think that our best bet is to fix the Democratic vehicle. There are some really good parts on it, and there are some useless parts that need to be replaced, and there are some downright dangerous parts that need to be removed immediately before they blow the whole thing up. But the frame isn’t good or bad - it’s the structure that we need in order to be able to move forward. So let’s get the parts we need installed and do that. Pissing on the tires or complaining about the transmission isn’t going to get this vehicle going where we want it to go.
People like Newsome cause me to question my frequently posted “anyone but Trump” opinion, but if this thread is indicative of where we are, the fascists have already won. We have a two party system. It is fairly simple, Dems or fascists. If we (generally speaking, i think we are more progressive than the party runs as a whole) walk away and will not vote against fascism, then what are we? I know, the lesser of two evils is still evil. Bit you know what else? It’s lesser evil. Allowing the fascists to take power because we don’t agree with all of the positions of the Dems is nuts! Hell, I agree with more of Manchin’s positions than Trump’s! And Manchin is barely above fascist himself. No, i will try to stop the Republicans any way i can, and the very least of tjose ways is by voting against them, for actual viable opponents. If we turn on ourselves, we only help the assholes trying to end our democracy, and for many of us, our existence. If there were a viable third option, i would be all for it. There is not. For a lot of us, and our familues and loved ones, this is very literally life and death. Lots of dems have proven to be useless dreck, nut the place to go after them is in primaries. In party meetings. In moving the party left. When it comes to the generals, R=Nazi. My vote will never assist them in eliminating the people i love. This thread is very upsetting for me, and i am going to go make something. Too wet to garden, but the shop is calling.
The implication is that anybody who has issues with the Democratic Party is immature, childish, and obsessed with impracticalities and impossibilities. Anyone with sense would obviously be too loyal to question, make waves, or demand more, right? /s
I highly resent that implication, and while I admit it may not have been what was intended by Duke, it can be read that way, and as such, I’ve addressed it.
I apologize if I’ve read too much into it, but we’re all overstressed and short on temper, so maybe we all need to take a little more care in how we word things?
I’m sure it’s not intended but this is just the reality of how we are seen even by allies. At the very least by way of compromise I want to be freed from the obligation to lie and be polite by pretending I don’t know otherwise very well and haven’t been putting myself aside for their benefit the whole damned time as I’ve been trying to find some kind of hope and trust in the Democratic party.
