A party that fights at all would be a good start.
The Democrats need to dump their old shitty politicians. I would vote for AOC if she decided to run for president.
The people need to save this country. Yes that means you and me actually going outside. We need to stop expecting systemic change to come from politicians within a two-party system.
But what if it inconveniences me even slightly?
Shit, forgot about that. We had a good run, fellas. Crash it up, and let’s pick a different seed for next run.
But I’m le tired.
Well have a nap…THEN FIRE THE MISSILES!!!
Exactly, the country is what we make it, that’s what a democracy is. If we do nothing, evil will do something.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing
Gonna be honest, wasn’t a huge fan of AOC a couple years ago. Glad to see her being the one person out there with Bernie trying to keep it real. Hell yeah
Who were you a fan of years ago?
Rather than try to start a new party, it’s easier and more efficient for the left and progressives to take control of the Democratic party and make it their own (can rename it later). Just like the right took over the Repub party.
The time is ripe for it – yes, a bit too ripe, maybe even too late, but unfortunately that’s how it works with humans–it takes things to get to extremely dire circumstances where all could be lost for the general population to be jolted out of complacency and finally take action.
BUT the other thing we need is someone with charisma and a certain personality type to emerge and lead, because most humans need to be led like sheep.
Would it be easier and more efficient?
You’d have to scrap the entire party. Pretty much every candidate, every analyst and advisor. They won’t oppose the republicans, but they’ll for sure oppose that.
I don’t see it happening, I keep hearing the dems wanting to double down.
What will happen is they’ll go “we tried to be more like the republicans but people voted republican. So we need to be even more like the republicans” and eventually they’ll win because the republicans do so much damage and they’ll say “we won by being more republican” and then they’ll pass the power back over. You need a real opposition party.
Except that was the whole idea with the Justice Democrats, that got AOC elected in the first place. Remember when she protested outside of Pelosi’s office? Seen any of that lately? Remember when she cried on the House floor? That strategy hasn’t worked. As soon as AOC got in, she got eaten by the party. I think advocates of the “take over the Dem party” strategy underestimate the enormous institutional pressure party members come under when they enter that bubble.
This is exactly right. I don’t think AOC has compromised as much as we think she has, but the institutional power is very real. I remember what things were like in 2016 too. They fought against Bernie’s influence at every step, and colluded to get their favorite candidate elected.
All we have to do is look at the most recent Third Way strategy document to understand. The right wing Democrats (“centrists”) would rather lose to Donald Trump with Harris than win with Sanders or any halfway progressive. It’s just a huge obstacle and if we do try to fix the party, we need to dislodge ALL of the entrenched right wing elements.
I know and agree with your points, but the time wasn’t ripe then. There are always people ahead of the curve and AOC is one. When she got there the Dem machine was still too powerful and too early to change it but now things have changed. People are now demanding that the old guard Dems either stand up and fight or get out and make room. AOC will be a leader in that.
The last election was a mortal wound to the old Dem party–not dead yet but dying and its infrastructure is there and ready to be taken over and appropriated for a new purpose.
Remember the TEA party is how the right started their movement. It took several election cycles but eventually every old guard Repub either joined them or got kicked out. They won because they had a significant movement of regular people behind them and then a charasmatic leader appeared and took the lead. That needs to happen on the left.
Luigi for President
Left founded the Labour Party in UK, was excluded by Centrists for most of last century, has never been able to gain political control for pushing radical change since 1945. If you try to make Dems your vehicle, it will destroy you before you reform it. Your plan is a false hope, I’m sorry to say.
I think it makes more sense to found your own political movement. That matters more than parties. Especially in an emergency when what matters is survival not manifesto promises or campaigns for elections that, realistically given Trump’s lawlessness and declared intention to reign as monarch and founder of a dynasty, might never happen.
Feed, house, heal each other - Americans already do that, just look at community responses to recent natural disasters like California fires - ‘ordinary people’ can help each other and often do so better than the government. This is a crisis for USA but also an opportunity for citizens to make an alternative society, invent new ways of working, new ways of meeting needs, inspiring creativity and innovation, creating an economy that really takes care of people instead of making some creep more wealth than he could ever use in a hundred lifetimes. Do for yourselves what the state has failed to do. Build another nation inside the dead carcass of corporate America. Be ready to take over when Trump’s coup and the fantasy of representative democracy finally dies. Emerge as a radically different society.
There’s no point trying to reanimate the old America when it brought you to this crisis and would do so again in future you ever let it. You need your own Plan 2025. I used to think like you, now I think anarchy is probably the best strategy. Do not gift your power to others, least of all charismatic leaders or political parties dominated by careerists, lobbyists, and corruption. When in crisis, do not carry on as normal. In crisis the best hope of survival is to do something radically different. Science shows, 80% of people cannot recognise a crisis and cannot innovate. You must be in the 20%. Cultivate boldness!
Left taking over the D party is no more reanimating the old America than the right taking over the R party was. D party a dying machine but a machine that’s already built and running, ready to be handed over to new operators to replace the defective parts and make it do what the people demand and need.
The most important thing now is to first stop the fascists from gaining total control, which means the opposition has to gain more political power quickly, whether that’s by fighting from the outside with a new party (IMO a less tenable strategy) or by fighting from both inside and outside to kick out the old guard and replace them, taking over the party apparatus (like the right did to the R party starting with the TEA Party movement).
You make good points. I sincerely hope you succeed. I admire Sanders and AOC - wish we had similar figures here in UK politics, we had Corbyn but he was destroyed by the rightwing of his party and now we have Starmer who is at best Centre-Right. I think Starmer is clueless and unwittingly preparing the way for a coup in UK like the one in US. We are just a few years behind you unless we find a miracle. I am more pessimistic than you because I think this Trumpian coup cannot be stopped by legal means now that Trump views himself as above all law and thinks his executive orders amount to regal degrees from an absolute monarch. I cannot imagine Trump being impeached, tried, deposed in USA’s current situation and I expect it to get much, much worse because Trump is serious about dismantling American democracy and has no respect for human rights and wants to wage imperialist wars and open access to the new economic zone in the ice-free Arctic. Would he even allow another election or accept any result he dislikes? Will Dems not be soon made an illegal group or labelled a terrorist organisation - like the people vandalising Tesla cars? The window of opportunity to stop him is closing very, very fast.
Given that what amounts to fascism or some similar tyranny not yet defined by academia already controls USA, what can ordinary citizens do? I think they have to recognise the old way is gone - no more calling police to report a crime, or expecting rights of employees to be respected, or getting insurance to cover healthcare, or having enforcible consumer rights, no free education, no civic freedoms or human rights, no social security in sickness or old age. Society, for the poor, those unable to emigrate, will be effectively lawless, have no safety nets, few outside resources to rely on, no state provision. Trump is trying to replace dollar with crypto currency. People might not even have access to cash economy but be reduced to barter. When ‘might is right’, the only way to protect your life, your loved ones, your neighbours and community, will be by organising yourself and improvising at the local level (and building ties with other similar organisations). Thus a kind of practical de facto anarchism - not read from a textbook and led by theory but built by trial and error from scratch from the ground up. I feel insane saying this about USA. It sounds more like an HBO or video game scenario! If Trump objects to such communities, they will either be disappeared by police or military or dragged into violent conflict with police or military. Eventually, it scales up and we have civil war or organised armed resistance and/or terrorism against Trump’s regime. Who wins that armed struggle, who else gets involved, will it lead to WW3, is beyond my guess. I cannot imagine what 2050 will be like for anywhere on earth, least of all USA. And by then, I’ll probably be dead of old age and never know.
I base this sketch of post-democracy USA on seeing what happens in improvised communities e.g. refugee camps etc. Yes, UN or MSF or other NGOs and charities do some professional organisation, send in some outside help/rations/transport/water/electricity, but the main work of surviving is on the refugees themselves. They do what they can, improvise schools, childcare, community kitchens, latrines, form orderly queues, ensure fair shares, stop crime, stop black markets, or help one another tolerate what they cannot control. USA has better infrastructure than a city of tents in Sudan or wherever but the principle remains - when a state fails, the people have to build from the ground up. Either that, or some opportunists hijack their fears, hunger, desperation, ambition, and recruit them into some cause not necessarily their own e.g. organised crime, religious fanaticism, terrorism, armed struggle in a civil war or maybe a revolution - give me your son to fight my cause and I’ll give you rice, give me your daughter for my brothel and she’ll send you a cut of the earnings so you can buy medicine, sell me your kidney and I’ll smuggle you to a new country where you’ll be safe. When society falls apart, there is chaos, and then there are new rules. The future is created by those who make those new rules.
I hope it will not come to this ‘worst case’ scenario. I hope there is a way to avoid this. But if it comes to it, I think leadership will emerge in the moment, from the community. It will not helicopter in from Washington or the state capital. The political parties will not organise food or medicine or dig graves. They are not designed to do that. Boy scouts, school football teams, college students, religious congregations, and random community groups would be more organised, integrated into the community, and potentially provide more timely, practical help. I would hope Leftists would be useful too but too many of us just talk, we don’t do the work. There is some hope in that community preparedness - we can be our own leaders, make our own society, fix our problems good enough to get by. Humans have that built in. We have been doing this for millions of years and we all default to human and we can build on that and protect the human against the inhumane. I have to believe that. I have to believe most people are good and do right by one another given a chance. I believe good is better than evil and can win in any struggle, given time, hard work, and some luck. I don’t want to be wrong about that. I think your hope in saving the democratic system by heroic efforts now, and my hope of surviving a failed system through heroic efforts in future, is based on this same belief in human decency and human beings’ sheer determination to survive. We are allies, I think.
I’m old. I write essays. Youngsters write snippets for social media. Apologies for my verbosity!
I think this Trumpian coup cannot be stopped by legal means now that Trump views himself as above all law and thinks his executive orders amount to regal degrees from an absolute monarch.
I agree, I think it’s a matter of a very short time before we all understand that the judicial branch is powerless against him, or I should say him combined with the Repub party which collaborates with him.
Either he’ll be stopped by political power of the opposition (if an effective one can be exercised), or violence like a civil war or coup, or else he won’t be stopped at all. Judging by how similar things are and have been happening in other countries, this feels like some kind of widespread shift away from a relatively short-lived period of democracy and back to the more usual systems of autocratic/oligarchic rule. But hey, it ain’t over yet so we should at least try to save what we’ve got.
I’m old too, so I don’t know how much help I can give to the younger people who will be the ones living long-term in whatever comes next. Good luck on your side of pond.
You don’t reform the democratic party, it reforms you. It’s like a corrupted windows install, you don’t use the reinstall windows option from within the corrupted windows, cause the corruption is carried over almost invisibility untill issues happen again. You make a fresh boot drive, and use that outside of the current instance to start fresh. The amount of people it would take to reform the democratic party would be more than enough to start our own parry, one without a history of corruption or full of old guard to sabotage it.
Who said reform it? Take it over! Or to use your analogy, they’ve built a powerful machine over many years with tons of resources and capabilities–THAT’s what we take away from them, we uninstall them and install a new OS / new leadership on. Starting a new party is like having the software but you’re starting from scratch building hardware to run it on.
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Then separate yourselves from the dems and create your own party. We will follow.
Absolutely. Dems are at an all time low of approval as far as I’m aware. This is the opportune time to make a new one. Enough with the weak responses to a threat that not only throws the US into chaos, but the rest of the world as well.
I will put forward a radical suggestion for Progressive candidates in 2028: physically take control of television studios at key points, and make your message. This is because FOX and other mass-media channels are in the pocket of conservatives, so they will try to downplay or outright ignore Progressives, in an attempt to deplatform them among the general public.
While online social platforms like Bluesky or physical locations like churches would be key for messaging, television is a major mouthpiece of the 1%. It will be important to steal the megaphone on occasion.
The studios almost certainly will speak only for Trump when not busy with glazing his nethers.
That will never be the democratic party. We need a new party, not a new democrat to save us.
If only AOC also fought harder and signed along with other members of congress to free mahmoud Khalil.
Democrats fight like hell all the time except when they’re in office.
I would love to see AOC and Bernie attempt to bring back the American labor party
This is the answer. Dems are compromised. A new party is needed.
Pick up where Debs left off
Bernie is pushing the 2028 presidential candidates.
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just make a new one already
What’s wrong with the leftist third parties we already have?
The fact they exist and got us nowhere near a unified working class movement.
They’re all sectarian and pointless. The party that takes us there will be formed by the popular working class movement
The ones that exist solely to split the progressive vote to ensure a loss?
So many comments about them starting a new political party and I don’t want to disagree but if democrats already have less votes than republicans now, wouldn’t that make it even harder to win an election?
Huge numbers of people eligible to vote, do not vote. I think the hope behind these calls for new parties is that the shy voters would like a change and would vote for a radical alternative in enough numbers to elect the Left into government. I am less convinced that shy voters are just waiting to give their votes to a better party. I think many have given up on representative democracy. The way all democracy, but especially USA democracy, has been privatised means you would still have to get massive funding to run a campaign just for the new party to be noticed by the media, let alone win votes from people not motivated to even bother to register to vote before. Thus your new party has to pander to donors more than its members or potential voters and the old, old story repeats on a loop where the party is just a puppet to wealthy puppet-masters. Old Dems are dead, welcome the New Dems, same as the old Dems.
Thinking things over, I am pretty old, nearly 70, I have recently decided that political parties and representative democracy are not able to deliver good government. Maybe last century they did, sometimes, but there’s no way to go back in time. I now believe in direct democracy and some kind of anarchy - my model is life in a small community, everyone knows and trusts each other, agrees the rules on how to run their lives, the focus is on just living each day and being as happy as possible. This society meets human need, in humane ways. We humans need that kind of nurturing. Modern nation states are too big, too complex, admin is too ‘one size must fit all’ impersonal not to be inefficient and tyranical. Better to live in smaller communities and have more autonomy. Manage larger problems through a wider network of those who share your values, a federation of new city states maybe. Can it be done? Only way to know is to try it.
The Far-Right have smashed the old reality. Their ideas about new cities-states imagine them as kingdoms with absolute monarchs, elites admin, and slaves with no rights, only allowed to live if they generate profits. It is up to each of us to use this cursed opportunity to make a new future different from the dystopia imagined by Curtis Yarvin and his ilk. We have to dare to be free. As things get worse, it will not be a choice but a necessity. Be your own rescuer or be another’s slave. Political parties have almost never been our friend, no matter what they say just to get our votes. More of the same is just slow death.
The democrats have less votes because their policies are platitudes and austerity at the expense of the working people and in service to party donors. It’s not for a lack of leftist sentiment, as Bernie himself still has quite a bit of a following in spite being independent
If democrats are worried about splitting the vote, they don’t have to field a candidate.
Chuckle!
