As for me, I'm leaving the Dem Party, but it's no big deal since they left us working class folks behind years ago. I am joining the Party of Bernie Sanders ~ the Independent Party! I am sick of a 2-Party system that's just like beer... Bud & Bud Lite ~ not much difference between the 2, just a few calories & the feeling you're doing yourself some good. You're not. They're basically the same thing. Well, "the same" isn't good enuff for me anymore & neither is a stagnant 2-Party system!! Dems used to be the Party of the working class, but guess they got tired of being "the Party of the poor" -- watching the Party that's always represented the rich, get richer; tired of being outspent every election since "Citizens United" (which had nothing to do with us citizens at all!).
It is & always was, "Corporations United" ~ but hard to justify that to real people. "Thanks alot SCOTUS!" Justices, you are NOT! But, now that we know some of the high-end "gifts" & vacations you've been given by your billionaire buddies, it makes more sense. STILL WRONG, but you have your job for rest of your life, so guess you can do as you please, eh? Who's gonna' say anything? The members of Congress whose campaigns the same billionaires are funding?! Ha! Not likely!
Our Democratic Republic lasted ALMOST 250yrs & always moving forward until recently, when a few SCOTUS Decisions were based on something other than the Constitution & threw us into "Reverse". **Throw your car from (D) into (R) that fast & you could drop your tranny right there on the road!! Shock too severe & "BOOM!"💥** You did the judicial version of that. (But hey, going in reverse at 100mph isn't much better, right?!)
I am fed up with this whole, 2-Party... Rich v. Poor...Party line...Us v. Them...stalemate!!
WE NEED a 3rd viable Party to "shake things up" -- yes/no/maybe(?) won't work in Congress (LOL) ~&~
WE NEED to get private donor money OUT OF POLITICS!!! Let those who want to contribute, put their $$$$ in a pool, to be shared!! Better yet ~> TAX THE TOP 1% to pay for our elections, since they have 100's of 1,000,000's of extra $$$$$ lying around that they apparently don't need!!! (They owe us that!)
And, don't forget to give the Independent Party their equal 1/3 of any elections money!
P.S. -- Smarter democracies have already removed private $$$ from their elections + have more than 2 Parties to represent their people! It ain't "rocket science", just common sense!
1-The left has been losing lately in the media because they are chickens*it. I rarely see people fight back the blatantly dishonest arguments that conservatives use to spread hate. Too many on the left (starting from the media) feel obligated to take people's arguments at face value and repeat them, instead of calling BS on them
2-It's no surprise that when young non-rich men, who are discriminated by a system that favors the old and rich, get angry if they are accused of having all of these advantages for being white and male. However this happens also because some on the left are fake, and find it easier to look good by accusing racism and male-advantage in a theoretical way rather than pushing for the economic change that might negatively affect the upper class they might belong to
3-I think it's genuinely a lost cause to hope that the leaders of the Democratic party will ever join the fight you're calling for and thats' because of MONEY. As long as you need a lot of money to win national elections (especially primaries), those elected politicians will never truly go against the economic interest of their large donors. Taking money out of politics should be the n.1 priority of progressives also because is one of the most popular issues among conservatives too
“Democrats could have walked out mid-speech and joined a rally on the steps of the Capitol, rejecting Trump and embracing tens of thousands of cheering federal workers, activists, Medicaid recipients, and pissed off voters.” We told them to do this! How many of us called, emailed, went to their offices, time and time again, telling them to do this exact thing? Instead, they went the usual, old, safe route of sitting there, politely holding small fans with words on them (which no one remembers), the women in pink suits. Bunch of corporate wusses. Except for a very few, including Al Green, who was, with the help of ten Democrats, sanctioned.
"In many states, the Democratic Party is either a wheezing husk or a useless collection of grifting consultants, so organizers have to build a permanent parallel infrastructure."
Glad to hear you say that. However, I'm not sure that Indivisible or 50501 fills the bill of a permanent parallel infrastructure. Neither appeals to a broad section of the electorate or even the potential electorate of 90M non-voters and neither has an electoral strategy.
Agreed — I don’t think 50501 is anything near that, and Indivisible would need to shift its focus significantly. I think that’s conceivable due to the mix of strong leadership at the top and the many accessible local chapters, but any big national movement will require an overarching ideology, which has yet to be established by protest and politics-focused groups.
Good callout JZ. Dems just need to listen to the working people. Then concentrate on delivering on those needs. Don’t worry about doing a million things. If they deliver on helping on the big ones, many of the small problems will disappear. And they must engage with people, not just every two years. They also need to make a concerted effort to reach out to young people. Go to where they find out about things, not to where people went in 1980. It is there for the taking. Just go do it!!!
Finally! A roadmap for progressives to follow!!! Medicare, Social Security, Voting rights, Protections for common workers, Protections for women, etc. These are the tenets that will energize the country. LET'S GO!!!
Yes indeed! At April 5th protests, being held all over the Country, we should say that too! "LET'S GO PEOPLE!" NOW IS THE TIME... B4 they make protests illegal, or send out the troops, as Trump has threatened he may do.
Fully agreed on all the prongs. Nice balance between conciseness and detail there. I can at least say it’s better than my three-prong party strategy (aggressively raising funds for unions in exchange for getting some of their personnel, creating explicitly partisan local newspapers, and boosting outreach to local YIMBY groups).
Regarding the last paragraph of the first prong, might I say that science and technology edutainment content, and progress studies in general, is ripe for a progressive reinterpretation. Right now, it’s a space dominated by people like MKBHD and Cleo Abram and Quora users; it’s aggressively corporatist and sterile and neoliberal-coded. One wonders how it can change to be progressive-coded.
I think Dem. voters have already expressed this and the fact that Senator Chuck Schumer is still the Dem. Minority Leader in the Senate shows us how much the Dem. office holders are responsive to what we want; namely, they don't give a damn.
As for me, I'm leaving the Dem Party, but it's no big deal since they left us working class folks behind years ago. I am joining the Party of Bernie Sanders ~ the Independent Party! I am sick of a 2-Party system that's just like beer... Bud & Bud Lite ~ not much difference between the 2, just a few calories & the feeling you're doing yourself some good. You're not. They're basically the same thing. Well, "the same" isn't good enuff for me anymore & neither is a stagnant 2-Party system!! Dems used to be the Party of the working class, but guess they got tired of being "the Party of the poor" -- watching the Party that's always represented the rich, get richer; tired of being outspent every election since "Citizens United" (which had nothing to do with us citizens at all!).
It is & always was, "Corporations United" ~ but hard to justify that to real people. "Thanks alot SCOTUS!" Justices, you are NOT! But, now that we know some of the high-end "gifts" & vacations you've been given by your billionaire buddies, it makes more sense. STILL WRONG, but you have your job for rest of your life, so guess you can do as you please, eh? Who's gonna' say anything? The members of Congress whose campaigns the same billionaires are funding?! Ha! Not likely!
Our Democratic Republic lasted ALMOST 250yrs & always moving forward until recently, when a few SCOTUS Decisions were based on something other than the Constitution & threw us into "Reverse". **Throw your car from (D) into (R) that fast & you could drop your tranny right there on the road!! Shock too severe & "BOOM!"💥** You did the judicial version of that. (But hey, going in reverse at 100mph isn't much better, right?!)
I am fed up with this whole, 2-Party... Rich v. Poor...Party line...Us v. Them...stalemate!!
WE NEED a 3rd viable Party to "shake things up" -- yes/no/maybe(?) won't work in Congress (LOL) ~&~
WE NEED to get private donor money OUT OF POLITICS!!! Let those who want to contribute, put their $$$$ in a pool, to be shared!! Better yet ~> TAX THE TOP 1% to pay for our elections, since they have 100's of 1,000,000's of extra $$$$$ lying around that they apparently don't need!!! (They owe us that!)
And, don't forget to give the Independent Party their equal 1/3 of any elections money!
P.S. -- Smarter democracies have already removed private $$$ from their elections + have more than 2 Parties to represent their people! It ain't "rocket science", just common sense!
Great article as usual, a few comments:
1-The left has been losing lately in the media because they are chickens*it. I rarely see people fight back the blatantly dishonest arguments that conservatives use to spread hate. Too many on the left (starting from the media) feel obligated to take people's arguments at face value and repeat them, instead of calling BS on them
2-It's no surprise that when young non-rich men, who are discriminated by a system that favors the old and rich, get angry if they are accused of having all of these advantages for being white and male. However this happens also because some on the left are fake, and find it easier to look good by accusing racism and male-advantage in a theoretical way rather than pushing for the economic change that might negatively affect the upper class they might belong to
3-I think it's genuinely a lost cause to hope that the leaders of the Democratic party will ever join the fight you're calling for and thats' because of MONEY. As long as you need a lot of money to win national elections (especially primaries), those elected politicians will never truly go against the economic interest of their large donors. Taking money out of politics should be the n.1 priority of progressives also because is one of the most popular issues among conservatives too
“Democrats could have walked out mid-speech and joined a rally on the steps of the Capitol, rejecting Trump and embracing tens of thousands of cheering federal workers, activists, Medicaid recipients, and pissed off voters.” We told them to do this! How many of us called, emailed, went to their offices, time and time again, telling them to do this exact thing? Instead, they went the usual, old, safe route of sitting there, politely holding small fans with words on them (which no one remembers), the women in pink suits. Bunch of corporate wusses. Except for a very few, including Al Green, who was, with the help of ten Democrats, sanctioned.
"In many states, the Democratic Party is either a wheezing husk or a useless collection of grifting consultants, so organizers have to build a permanent parallel infrastructure."
Glad to hear you say that. However, I'm not sure that Indivisible or 50501 fills the bill of a permanent parallel infrastructure. Neither appeals to a broad section of the electorate or even the potential electorate of 90M non-voters and neither has an electoral strategy.
Agreed — I don’t think 50501 is anything near that, and Indivisible would need to shift its focus significantly. I think that’s conceivable due to the mix of strong leadership at the top and the many accessible local chapters, but any big national movement will require an overarching ideology, which has yet to be established by protest and politics-focused groups.
Good callout JZ. Dems just need to listen to the working people. Then concentrate on delivering on those needs. Don’t worry about doing a million things. If they deliver on helping on the big ones, many of the small problems will disappear. And they must engage with people, not just every two years. They also need to make a concerted effort to reach out to young people. Go to where they find out about things, not to where people went in 1980. It is there for the taking. Just go do it!!!
Yes! Yes! Yes!
Finally! A roadmap for progressives to follow!!! Medicare, Social Security, Voting rights, Protections for common workers, Protections for women, etc. These are the tenets that will energize the country. LET'S GO!!!
Yes indeed! At April 5th protests, being held all over the Country, we should say that too! "LET'S GO PEOPLE!" NOW IS THE TIME... B4 they make protests illegal, or send out the troops, as Trump has threatened he may do.
Fully agreed on all the prongs. Nice balance between conciseness and detail there. I can at least say it’s better than my three-prong party strategy (aggressively raising funds for unions in exchange for getting some of their personnel, creating explicitly partisan local newspapers, and boosting outreach to local YIMBY groups).
Regarding the last paragraph of the first prong, might I say that science and technology edutainment content, and progress studies in general, is ripe for a progressive reinterpretation. Right now, it’s a space dominated by people like MKBHD and Cleo Abram and Quora users; it’s aggressively corporatist and sterile and neoliberal-coded. One wonders how it can change to be progressive-coded.
“What should we be doing? What do people want?”
I think Dem. voters have already expressed this and the fact that Senator Chuck Schumer is still the Dem. Minority Leader in the Senate shows us how much the Dem. office holders are responsive to what we want; namely, they don't give a damn.