She did talk about what she would do though. She ran on increasing the minimum wage to atleast 15. The cash assistance is actually incredibly helpful but you’re right it’s not enough but also, I don’t know who is around you but everyone I know, old and young, find making over 100k to be impressive. She also talked about plenty of other progressive policies.

Also her and all Democrats mainly ran on the problems she could fix and also on the Trump is a fascist shit that was 100% accurate. I only heard the idea of her being the first black Indian woman president be a side thing. There weren’t literal slogans about it like with Clinton in 2016.

Again, you’re not saying what is identity politics. Is it just that socially progressive policies is identity politics?

Edit: I also think it’s important to say that “identity politics” is a right wing term used to describe accepting minorities and giving them equal rights. If you say you’re fine with Social progressivism and just want economic progressivism too, that’s fine. But then why use their right wing term for it? Why not do “Democrats: Best I can do is socially progressive and economically conservative policies”?

Totally right that those are all problems and that the Democrats should do more when in power. And while more Black and Latino people voted for trump than ever before, they still by a majority voted for Harris. And women voters of both demographics voted even more for her than men Also only 18% of those who were LGBT and voted went for Trump, a drop from 27% in 2020.

You also didn’t address the commenters point, what is Identity Politics in your meme? Just saying some minorities voted for Trump doesn’t provide rationale for your comment. What is identity politics for you?

100% agree. He’s been a Russian agent from the start working towards the dismantling of the US in every way. Including, I think, trying to push the country so far that it splits up so the US is no more. Putin’s revenge on the US “winning” the Cold war.

That’s a good way to have foreign companies that are currently invested in the US to pull all of their investments and fire everyone working for them over here.

Everything he does is just making us more isolated from the world.

“our community too” you say??? Then why are you hell bent on absolutely destroying it and supporting people who want to send all of us, you included, to camps? You lost all right to be apart of this community the day you decided voting for fascism was more important than your fellow queer folk.

Fuckers deserve to never be allowed in any gay bar ever again.

I mean the thing that signaled Biden had any chance in 2020 was him winning South Carolina pretty big and that showed the establishment moderates that there was someone to back who could win against Bernie. Since Bernie had a plurality not a majority it was a tough race to win outright. Super Tuesday solidified his lead but then Covid happened less than 2 weeks later and made it so Bernie couldn’t have made up for his losses on Super Tuesday. Basically guaranteeing that Biden would win. The people that dropped out before ST were Buttigieg, Klobochar, and O’Rourke had kinda already crashed and burned. But Pete was the more left leaning out of those people so even with him dropping out it would make sense for much of those voters to go to Bernie. So realistically a Bidens bump started with South Carolina and the moderates then realized he was their only chance. Again, Bernie could have, and likely would have over come this without COVID. But he didn’t. If voters in South Carolina had picked Bernie Biden wouldn’t have gotten any bump and Bernie would have continued his way to a plurality of votes. Biden also eventually got a majority of voters to his side while Bernie has never had a majority of voters. Mind you, neither did Obama. But Obama was…Obama. Being a young charasmatic person who can inspire in your speeches helps a whole lot.

Bernie was doing well but couldn’t overcome that Biden was viewed as a strong candidate by moderates overall, that covid happened, and also that he just wasn’t a Democrat. People had the same thought process for Bloomberg because he was a Republican. They wanted a democrat at the head.

This is also why it will be easier for someone who has always been a Democrat to win the presidential primary as a progressive. Bernie also has the trouble with being a guy with great ideas but still being an old dude and going on tangents that aren’t necessary to make his point. He is also not the best at inspiring in his speeches, not that they can’t be inspiring. Just that he’s not as Charismatic as Obama was. Someone like AOC though has the charisma down, has the ideas down, has the ability to talk like a normal person down, is young, and is able to use things like social media and be just as normal as anyone else.

Which is fair to say. I just think he should be talking about primarying the establishment Dems as opposed to just not running as Democrats.

Okay I see what you’re saying now. Yeah I think we are on the same page. It’s really all about persistence and progressives voting consistently. I was thinking more about how the movement he started didn’t continue on its pace, not necessarily that nothing he did mattered.

I also think the 2020 primaries is complicated in just that the moderates that dropped out weren’t polling super well anyway so them dropping out didn’t give Biden as much of a boost as much as just him being Biden. That said, Bernie should have been the candidate but not enough people voted for him in the primary to get that to happen. He also still faced the “He’s not a democrat” accusation which was a problem for him in both primaries he ran in. Again, if more progressives had come out to vote for Bernie, he would have won.

It’s all about voting in the primaries.

So then he’s saying “Split your votes and make sure no one you support ever gets into power anywhere above the local level because the democrats suck and the system is broken”?

Started a Tea Party like movement? Or started saying we need one? Because he did not start one at all. If he had we would have Democrat voters coming out in primaries more, and kicking out establishment Dems more if they don’t adhere to the parties core beliefs. He may have wanted to start one back then, but it was a false start because people lost a lot of steam when he wasn’t the candidate. Sure there were a lot of progressives elected in the next midterm, but that should have been a continuing trend, instead of something that plateaus. The Left has lost steam with their movement because they don’t keep their eye on the ball, we get distracted with infighting and splitting our votes with third parties instead of relentlessly pursuing our goal of remaking the party, something the Tea Party movement did extremely well at.

Dunno if running in the Republican primary would be worth anything because Republican primaries are very MAGA and if you aren’t that then you won’t get the nom at all.

Dude should be saying we need our own tea party movement where we take over the Democrat party. Not that we need to fracture ourselves even more.

That said, I think there is an argument for independent runs in purely local politics in areas that only have Republicans run for things and have a hatred for Democrats they can’t seem to move past.

Regardless. Bernie should know how our system works by now, he should know that fracturing has and will always be a stupid idea that only removes power from the leftists and progressives in the country and then gives it to the Republicans. Which then makes the Democrats move right because the progressives have left the building. This is just fucking stupid on a non local politics scale and Bernie should know better.

The DNC definitely didn’t want him there. But the RNC didn’t want trump. Trump was able to convince voters to vote for him despite him being a long shot candidate. Bernie wasn’t. Bernie, if he was a better organizer, would have been able to convince more people to vote in the primary either to outnumber the people who voted for Clinton or convinced the Clinton voters to change to his side. Obama was someone who was able to convince voters to come out and vote for him in the primary and was able to convince Clinton voters to switch sides. Again, Bernie couldn’t.

I also think a core part of this is just him running for the nomination for the Democrat party despite not in fact being a Democrat. I had many people around me who also agreed with him but voted for Clinton because he wasn’t a Democrat and obviously only wanted to be able to be a part of the party when he needed them as opposed to always being there.

I personally think if Bernie had always been a part of the Democrat party he would have had an easier time convincing enough people to switch to his side. It’s not like he needed a blowout to win the nomination. This is also why I think someone like AOC would have an easier time running for the nomination since she is and always has been a Democrat.

Bernie should be running “here’s how to run for office in your area” drives on his oligarchy tour. The only way progressives will kick out corporate democrats is by the common person running more. Bernie should be pushing more people to run instead of just getting up on a stage in front of people and being a politician. He’s not a good organizer. Great talker. Horrible at getting people out to vote. Dude couldn’t even get enough people out to vote in the Democrat primary in 2016 to defeat Clinton. She beat him by a larger voting margin than Trump won by last year.

Reminds me of the “protests” outside of E3 when the game Dantes Inferno was shown in 2010. EA thought it would be a great idea to just, hire a bunch of people to take a protest that played into the games themes. So they’d each be holding stuff about the 7 sins, layers of hell. All that shit. It was not a good strategy. Faking shit to win never is, even if it works once, it means it likely won’t ever again.

And? Progressives still win primaries all the time. If we had more people vote in them, and had more progressive candidates running, then more progressives would win regardless of what the Party wants. Republicans didn’t want Trump in 2016, they desperately tried to not have him, but the voters kept voting for him so he won the primary and became the party.

No but it’s incredibly incredibly rare for them to not hold primaries. It only happens when there is, either an obviously massive lead, an incumbent president, or when someone is running unopposed. Both parties do that. Primaries happen 99% of the time. People say primaries didnt happen in 2024 but they absolutely did in almost all 50 states president wise and in all 50 states lower than president wise.

So while there is no law that says “you have to hold a primary” they will still be holding primaries. There’s only been one time when in modern history when the incumbent isnt running and there weren’t primaries held to find his replacement and that was last year with Harris.

Primaries have the problem where so few people come out to vote in them, at least on the Democrat side, that even if the people broadly seem to support a candidate in the area, they’ll often not even bother voting in the primary. This happened in 2016 when Bernie lost the primary by 3 and a half million votes and only would have won if all but 9 super delegates went to him which never would have happened because he didn’t win a majority of the votes.

Primaries will happen, we can vote them out. AOC did it in 2018 and we can do it nationwide next year.

But why make a new party when you can vote out establishment corporate Democrats in primaries, remaking the Democratic party? Seems pointless to start from square 1 when the Dems are right there ripe for a take over.

The lawmaker said Democrats are worried they would get the blame for a shutdown if they voted to defeat the House bill. The House is out of session for the rest of the week, upping the pressure on Senate Democrats.

Voters haven’t punished Republicans for their numerous shut downs. But that said, voters are always more likely to blame Democrats for anything at all.

In the article there are definitely some interesting points. Like how Elon would probably use the shut down to fire even more people. Or Trump would use it to take even more power from Congress.

I still think the Democrats need to stand firm and refuse to vote for it, make Republicans pass it via reconciliation. Shut it down if necessary. But there’s definitely a lot of possibly terrible outcomes to a shut down to consider.

First point, this is not an instance to simply give up working with Democrats. That one bad experience shows that what you need to do is be consistent and when democrats withdraw from their views and moderate that you need to the primary them and show them that if they do those things they will be kicked out of office. You don’t elect people once and then expect everything to always work out. You go and continue holding their feet to the fire. The article you linked is interested only in trying to show that working towards leftist politics in mainstream parties is a dead end because it’s not taking the lesson of the experience to the logical conclusion of voting again to kick out the Democrats that moderated. But I’m not surprised since it also seems to think a third party will ever take root which will never happen and only removes any power we have as individuals.

Second. I totally agree just medicaid isn’t enough, I mentioned that. I think the system of for profit insurance needs to go but I was talking to someone who said Democrats don’t ever do anything and that was my point. They do shit all the time even if it’s not as good as it should be, that just means more work needs to be done. Which is always a normal thing in any form of government, persistence is how things change and keep changing, not voting once and thinking everything will magically be fixed like what many did in 08 with Obama.

Third. I also agree that FDR saved capitalism but we as communists still had power back then through our voting bloc that was massively voting for the Democratic party. The communists back then supported FDR because they understood that we need to have a seat at the table and that to do that we need to vote for leftist Democrats. They did that and then had a seat at the table pushing for more socialist policies. Again, Communists, particularly during the war when FDR used a communist like structure of a federal government directed economy to great success, the people like Browder knew that we can be communists and have a seat at the table only when we vote for Democrats, that running our own people for the presidency and often for federal offices in general is a fools errand and that we need to invest in changing the democratic party because that’s how the two party system works. Then they were cast out post FDR death at direct instruction by the authoritarian piece of shit Stalin.

A third party is a lovely idea until you remember that that’s not how the American system works. First past the post, the different voting restrictions, all the other shit, these keep third parties from being able to impact anything but local politics. But until many of those things change third parties are wasting your vote. Federal funding does fuck all when it means you lead to fascists wanting to put queer people in camps and wanting to create trump Gaza into power. Federal funding also won’t fix any of the systems that keep third parties out of power. A third party can’t simultaneously take power and change the system while also not be capable of taking power and changing the system. It’s running around in circles pretending you’re moving towards a brighter future when it’s be better to just remake the democratic party who already has the infrastructure and funding and who many will just always vote for and who doesn’t have the system literally making it impossible for them to take power.

Edit: I’ve helped some of my local communists and socialists impact our local area but being in a deep red state most of what everyone does is outreach and organizing as opposed to actual governmental stuff. I’m also disabled and trans and have my own shit going on working to getting out of my red state so that I’m in a much more blue area where I will be more comfortable working with my fellow communists and socialists.

Democrats have definitely not done enough and done some shitty things. They also passed the first infrastructure bill in 15(?) or so years under Bidens first 2 years. They passed a bill fucking saving the economy during both Obama’s and Bidens first 2 years, providing stimulus and saving a collapsing economy. They passed the Dodd Frank act in Obama’s first 2 years that regulated Wall Street even if it wasn’t enough, it still significantly helped shit. They passed the the ACA which, while not perfect, mandated insurance companies to cover people with preexisting conditions which got healthcare for tens of millions. It expanded Medicaid which, despite being refused by red states, in the states that accepted the funds it provided relatively cheap healthcare to tens of millions. They passed the first bill that has ever had any climate change initiatives in it during Bidens first 2 years and Harris campaigned on doing more. They introduced the EV tax credits that have got people to buy non gas producing cars at massive rates, even if not enough. They increased the minimum wage in 2009 and tried to again in 2021. That only failed because they simply didn’t have the votes. They could have gotten rid of the parliamentarian if they wanted but then it still wouldn’t have had the votes even for a simple majority so it wouldn’t have mattered. They invested in expanding trains across the country but because of trump being elected last year that’ll probably be cut.

They have passed plenty of really progressive legislation that died in the Senate because of the filibuster and Republicans refusing to vote for even the most basic things. They could have tried to get rid of the filibuster but to do that they need a majority of the Senate to vote for that rule package and 2 Democrat senators refused to because they’re assholes. They could have fixed much of that if they had been given by the voters a larger majority in the Senate so they could have tanked those 2 senators votes.

Democrats should have done more. They should be doing more when they have power. They have run on progressive policies time and time again, however, and even though they’re not as progressive as they should be and still have some shit policies, that doesn’t mean they do nothing.

If not for the ACA I wouldn’t have healthcare, I have a preexisting condition and that law mandates insurance companies to keep me on. I also happen to live in a state with expanded Medicaid which has given healthcare to tons of people I know when they could only afford the cheap stuff. Should there have been a public option? Absolutely, health insurance shouldn’t be a for profit industry.

But to say they did “nothing” is to directly say you either, refuse to acknowledge anything positive they have done because it wasn’t perfect or because they also did shitty things, or that you simply aren’t paying attention enough to know they did positive things.

Listen, you’re a .ml user. That makes me assume you’re a communist, which is completely okay in my book. Ya know the only time in American history that communists have had any amount of influence in American society? It was under FDR because they went out every primary and every year to vote for progressive and leftist Democrats to have representation in government just as much as non communists. Earl Browder was the leader of the party at the time and he pushed for supporting Democrats and it worked. They didn’t run candidates during the election years because FDR was their candidate. Browder correctly realized and stated that American parties are coalitions. If communists, of which I am one too, want to get a seat at the table, want to be able to actually influence policy instead of just twiddling our thumbs and yelling at fucking walls without getting anywhere, we have to vote in the primaries for progressive leftist Democrats and change the party. We have to be consistent voters. There will never be a third party that takes root, it will never happen, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have a seat at the table and work towards moving the Overton window back left by voting in primaries and voting out establishment Democrats in favor of people with better views who will do more. This is how we as leftists had power under FDR, its how we helped introduce more socialist policies. We had a seat at the table and were able to influence shit. We need to be able to recognize that that was a time when we had the most power, acknowledge why we had any, and do what we can to get back there.