“Safe” is how we got fucking Trump and the Turdpublicans running amok. How about we try some socialism, instead of unbridled capitalism?
Tbh Idgaf. I really don’t. Show up to the primaries, whoever wins gets my full support. I will volunteer and campaign for that person, whoever it is.
I don’t think that is going to be necessary any more.
I said this at the time, why field a chancy candidate in a country of racists and misogynists unless you wanted to lose?
They need to energize their base and most people voting for Democrats are not racist or misogynist enough for the colour of a candidate’s skin to be a major issue. That isn’t why Harris lost and that should be obvious enough.
Obama won in 2008 and 2012. An establishment candidate of color, or woman candidate, will fare worse than a white equivalent (like Biden). But a strong leader of color, or woman leader, could absolutely win.
Also Bernie was white and a man, but the DNC had very different reasons for not liking him.
I think you have to be a much stronger candidate than Harris was to be either of those things, let alone both. Obama was a very strong personality and he only had one strike against him. And he wasn’t running against a social media shitstorm because that whole strategy was still very nascent.
We already saw what happened to Bernie in the 2016 DNC nomination race; he wasn’t going to get that close again, they had to pull out all the bullshit DNC fuckery to get Hillary in there.
Harris started really strong, too, but then just had to turn the whole campaign into a Liz Cheney slumber party and couldn’t admit that the obvious genocide in Gaza was a bad thing. She literally just had to let Tim Walz do his thing and it would have gone great.
Establishment Democrats love losing.
The battle of being politcally correct vs appealing to more voters.
I voted kamala but I thought her campaign and policies were total shit. I want a bernie or aoc, but the ones who run on empathy and understanding are going to lose in this nation, for now.
Republicans will make sure the democrats never have a successful platform. They will do absolutely everything in their power to make sure anything positive is never passed unless their name is on it as the driver. If anything maybe we should all just join the republican party and vote for a liberal candidate in their primaries. If just half of the democrat voters did this we’d win their primaries and win the election by default.
It’s Beshear isn’t it?
So they’re already trying to throw the 2028 election. For fuck’s sake
Of course. People should already organise around an alternative.
Guillotine for president 2028
This was exactly what I was hoping it was
AOC/Walz or Walz/AOC. They would make a killer team.
Tim “Expand Isreal’s Borders” Walz? Tim “lost his own home district in the presidential election” Walz? Nah, hard pass.
Putting a woman at the top of the ticket again would definitely be a way to show them, “hey we are willing to walk into the same trap as many times as it takes to prove our point about equality.”
Not enough women think a woman should be president to make the idea viable, and that’s not my fault.
It’s just self reporting your own misogyny if you think it’s cause they were women and not because of who they were as people
Oh please. We live in a very sexist world, and you’d be a clown to deny this has bearing in the political world
We live in a very sexist
worldcountry.FTFY. Non-shitholes manage to follow women leaders just fine.
Those sexists wouldn’t be voting for a Democrat, anyway.
I think the issues with Harris and Clinton was that they were both boring, pro establishment candidates and Harris especially was a prosecutor right when the BLM movement was demanding police reform. The DNC can’t or won’t read the room.
I find it funny, that you still buy into this narrative. Most western countries and many countries were women are considered to be discriminated more than in western countries had women leading governments. This includes far right parties such as in Italy.
Neither Hillary nor Harris lost because they were women. They lost because they had political positions driving away progressives and presented themselves in an uncharismatic and “high-and mighty” way that alienated the conservative bases they tried pondering to. If you want to win you have to at least pretend to care about normal people, not belittle them.
Two questions.
-
Can you reference statements or interactions where these women represented themselves as high and mighty?
-
Isn’t part of trump’s appeal to his base (regardless of them saying “he’s just like us”) that he claims to know more about, or be better than someone else, at literally everything?
For #2, Trump has a way of talking and carrying himself that makes him seem obviously like not one of the political elites around him. His plans are also wildly different than theirs (to the point of stupidity) and he seems ready to upend existing systems, which working-class people who those systems haven’t helped like. Hillary was one of the most establishment candidates to ever exist, and Harris kept herself as basically 100% aligned to Biden during the election (and to other classic establishment Republicans like the Cheney).
People also seem to forget that Kamala had no primary to prove her chops, and had to work with less time to campaign due to Biden’s stupidity. While not a great candidate, she got fucked over by the DNC’s myopic habit of anointing candidates.
She also had Biden financially backing a genocide, with no pushback from her, to contend with.
It’s hard to say how much that was a factor. We know that the campaign’s staff were instructed to record voter concerns about Gaza as “no response,” but independent polling organizations found that most voters ranked the issue well below the usual, immigration and the economy. IIRC, only in Michigan was the number of protest voters high enough to perhaps swing the election.
So your argument is that Trump doesn’t present himself as high and mighty? The dude had AI Photoshop him as the fucking pope…
Fascists want a strong-man leader, so yes, he and they produce photos of him with rippling muscles, riding a wind-swept horse, and while nailed to Jesus’ cross all at the same time.
But they don’t consider him an “elite” either. He’s supposed to drain the swamp, remember? They think he’s out of the establishment and will destroy the system that took affordable homes from them with his big, strong, racist muscles.
Now, I don’t think any of this is inconsistent, but even if you could find one, yeah, the common person is not a well-informed, forged in the fires of philosophical rigor, politically strategic agent of the people’s will—they believe a lot of irrational things. This is why the leopard eats their face so often.
The real difference between the parties is that the republicans have a story. They sell snake oil and salves to cure your ailing economy, while the Democrats sell… I mean, nothing, really. They sell the idea that things are just fine as they are, something nobody believes.
So it sounds like they are okay with a man being high and mighty, but a woman displaying any kind of competence or qualification is unacceptable grandstanding.
It’s almost as if what appeals to right wing voters doesn’t necessarily appeal to left wing voters. Those right wing voters don’t like women appearing to know more than men, but do like men who carry themselves as of they know everything and can do no wrong.
I know it wasn’t you that made the point, but…
Neither Hillary nor Harris lost because they were women.
Yep… It was because they were women.
Nice link, but the prompt for number 1 was…
Can you reference statements or interactions where these women represented themselves as high and mighty?
The article has no direct quotes from Harris or Hillary. The closet thing I could find was a complaint that for the month of October, Harris appeared with Mark Cuban more often than the UAW leader.
It also has some pretty dumb takes.
That’s gonna be a ‘no’ for me. Try again?
-
Which woman matters.
It’s an uncomfortable truth but there’s a lot of sexism out there that simply believe that a “man” … any man is better than women in positions of power. Like I heard about Latinos for Trump believing Trump would just simply be better than Kamala on the economy due to his gender.
To be clear, I definitely don’t agree with it.
Democrats are gonna blow it on a fucking centrist again
They’re trying to avoid centrists, they want right wing
They basically want the American Keir Starmer.
That’s way too left for them
Organize now and win primaries later. Shove a progressive down the DNC’s throat like Trump shoved himself down the RNC’s throat in 2016.
2016, 2020, and 2024 made it obvious the Democratic Party will never let a progressive win the election. They will do whatever they need to do to mess with the election to prevent that from happening. 2016 they manipulated the media heavily, used delegates to manipulate numbers early to build support for her, manipulated graphs to make him seem like he was doing badly, constantly misconstrued Bernie’s ideas in media interviews, gave her debate questions, and showed empty podiums Trump would sit at instead of Bernie speeches. 2020 they brought in Bloomberg who only entered to make sure Bernie didn’t win, also did some media manipulation, kept trying to coopt some of his ideas in a more watered down form, and then called everyone but Warren, who shared the most voters with Bernie, to drop out at the same time after it looked like he could win. In 2024 they basically didn’t even have a primary, with no debates, interviews with candidates, or anything, and even skipped it in some states. Once that process was over, he just handed the candidacy over to his VP.
They will always tip the scales and will never let it be fair if there is a danger of an outsider winning. The Democratic Party is a bunch of donors and industry staffers in a trench coat. I’ve basically given up on having any hope in it, this last election and it’s support for “the most lethal army in the world” while we’re enabling a genocide was the last straw.
Average progressive primary voter: see above
Average centrist primary voter: “Boy do I love phonebanking for Average Centrist #39!”
Who the fuck ever told you politics was fair? Who said change is easy? These things didn’t happen randomly, they happened because people had their fingers on the scale because they could put their fingers on the scale. Organize, mobilize, and slam your fist so hard on the scale so hard that change becomes inevitable, or don’t and moan about the result.
HR Clinton and Bernie Sanders were actually neck and neck until she pulled out ahead. It was really close. Then in 2020 far less people voted in the primaries, likely due to defeatism like yours.
Also, Every single dem is a Public Option proponent and wants to overturn Citizens United. It just means fuck all without 60 senate seats.
I think every election cycle there’s probably people who get jaded, hence all the non-voters.
And it’s only 60 senate seats because they’ve decided it needs it. The majority sets the rules like that, they could make it happen if they wanted to and change them if they wanted to. The only time they’ve ever done it is to approve some Federal judges. Otherwise, they usually let the Republicans overturn norms, which just makes us go further right.
There haven’t been more dems than Repubs in over ten years, there haven’t even been more than 50 dems total without independent caucus, so that sounds like a bad idea to change the rules at that time, tbh.
Trump won because he threatened to run as an independent and spoil the Republicans chances. The DNC would rather let the Republicans win then let a progressive independent win. If we can’t get a real progressive on the ballot, we can’t wait for election day to do something about it
He won because all the carbon copy neocons split their primary votes enough that he had the biggest plurality for months. He had a solid lead by the time the field narrowed enough
Democratic voters need to find their balls and brains to deny the establishment their choice instead of reluctantly getting behind the MSNBC boosted candidate. The best thing we can do for the Democratic party at this moment is criticize the fuck our of establishment bullshit.
They kinda did. That’s how Harris lost
As much as I hate Harris, that was a dumb decision.
Criticize? Get into your local party. Get progressives in as dog catchers, then city council, then mayor, then state legislator, comptroller, a tourney general, then governor, then national representative, senator, then president with a party that will support their agenda.
If progressives are the only ones who win primaries then progressives will be the candidates.
That’s absolutely a legitimate path, though you better have a network of like minded folks doing the same thing in at least 30-40 states if you want to succeed at the transition to the national scene. You are also talking about at least a 40-50 year effort.
I also wonder what the plan is to keep this new party from becoming just as corrupt as our other two. Remember that Kyrsten Sinema and John Fetterman both ran as progressives. I’m sure it could be managed to at least some degree, but it would be no easier than cleaning up the Democrats.
You also won’t just have to vet your politicians, you will also need to vet your primary voters. You are going to have to recruit them from many of the same crowd that keep voting in the Schumers and Pelosis of the Democratic party.
I’ve been playing in my head with the idea of trying to create what would amount to almost a new religion, but devoted to shared reality instead of anything supernatural. Get people together once a week for refreshers on how to recognize and push back on all the various psyops the world is plagued with. Kids go to Sunday school to learn about logical fallacies and contemplate ethics and moral questions inside various logical frameworks. It would be a beautiful thing.
Democratic voters need to find their balls and brains to deny the establishment their choice instead of reluctantly getting behind the MSNBC boosted candidate.
If it looks like that’s going to happen, they just won’t bother with primaries.
Again.
I hope everyone here is finding and boosting viable third party candidates. We’ve got several long rows to hoe, but we can make the garden grow.
A candidate being third party precludes them from being ‘viable’ in our system, at least in the federal elections. It’s more advantageous for an independent or progressive democrat to take the primary, but they’ll always be at a disadvantage under the DNC. Maintaining a high populist energy through the midterms and into 2027 will force them to recon with it. Hopefully Bernie and AOC can keep up the oligarchy tour and keep it in the headlines, and maybe if they do more democrats will join the cause.
Its been so long since we’ve had a candidate who embraced a people first platform instead of triangulating and offering the barest minimum of information of what they strongly support. Just that would be an overwhelmingly welcome change. The whole election process has become enshitified.
viable third party candidates
There is no such thing.
If we want to win a Democratic primary then we will have to overcome the Democratic establishment. If we want to skip the primary and win the general, then we will have to overcome both parties. It’s much easier to completely shut out third party candidates in the general than to freeze a popular candidate out of a primary.
The biggest barrier any progressive candidate has to overcome is that there is a massive core of disengaged Democratic voters who just want to beat the Republican, and they have totally swallowed the myth of centrists doing better because they appeal to the right.
Having to overcome that at the same time we have to overcome the very real narrative that a third party candidate will just split the Democratic vote is absolutely impossible.
The only two things that might save Republicans in 2028 are Democrats winning big in 2026 and doing nothing, and the bulk of the progressive movement backing a third party.
I don’t think it is easier. The DNC controls the processes and all the systems within their own party plus the media biases, while a third party who makes it to the general only has to contend with the normal difficulties of the media. They’ve done different kinds of maneuvering each of the last 3 primaries to prove this, not to mention other things like tipping the scales in local primaries or choosing that old guy over AOC for that committee seat they were fighting for.
A lot of anti-establishment voters went from Bernie to Trump, so I think the right candidate can maneuver this middle path, not by being a centrist but by appealing to people who hate the establishment in this country but want someone other than Trump after he no doubt fucks up again.
A third party has never gotten more than a couple percent of the vote. They often didn’t even qualify for the ballot in every state. They are not viable with first past the post
while a third party who makes it to the general only has to contend with the normal difficulties of the media.
When you look at how Democrats control primaries, it’s almost entirely through their cozy relationship with the media. It was more direct in 2016, but in 2020 it was a consistent message from the media that Bernie was less electable and Trump had to be defeated.
If you were familiar with running as a third party in even local elections, you would know that just getting on the ballot as a third party is a massive effort. Also, the controls that Democrats have over the primary process, Democrats and Republicans together have over the general election process.
choosing that old guy over AOC for that committee seat
That has nothing to do with popular elections, but it does bring up a good point. Do you think AOC would have been more likely to get that seat if she were in a third party? Once you start getting people into office, you will still be dependent on coalitions with Democrats to get anything done.
A lot of anti-establishment voters went from Bernie to Trump, so I think the right candidate can maneuver this middle path
Here is the thing that drives me nuts. You are not proposing anything that hasn’t been tried over and over again. Third party advocates point to the limited gains of progressives within the Democratic party, and ignore their own elong history of total failure. What you “think” defies pretty obvious reality.
To be clear, we’d need a large movement in this country to abandon the Democratic party before I think it would work, but I think it’s worth pushing for because the Dems seem like a lost cause, unless all of the leadership and entrenched establishment within there is changed at the same time. It’s the same reason you can’t change a corrupt police department by joining as a good cop. It just doesn’t work that way. Besides, it’s happened before in this country with a popular enough leader (it’s why we don’t have Whigs anymore, or a Bull Moose party).
I am so fucking sick of doomerism.
Neither party has ever had a real primary for an incumbent president. Neither party has ever not had a primary without an incumbent president, since we started having primaries. I’m not defending it, because it’s an affront to democracy, but if your looking at the past to predict the future, then you should do it right.
This wasn’t the time to did it as it’s always been done when everyone and their mother knew Trump was a dangerous fascist President and could see the warning signs of Biden’s age.
Their corporate donation spice must flow, and a progressive platform isn’t what is requested.
It’s gonna be Pete, Newsome, or fettermen. ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ progressives are gonna loooove these options /s
Establishment dems would view Gavin as the safest of those white boys, but I thought he didn’t want to run.
They don’t want a safe candidate. A safe candidate would be someone who takes broadly popular positions, like Medicare for All, a jobs guarantee, or public internet. They want centrist candidates, which the consultant class has convinced them is safe (and, coincidentally, never take positions that upset the donors), but centrism is the least safe position to take at this point. No one who is watching their wages stagnate while the cost of living skyrockets is thinking, “I hope this can be solved through incremental changes that don’t disrupt that status-quo too much!”
Primaries aren’t as popular as they should be but they’re still participated in by 30 Million voters. You could be promoting the primaries and helping pick a candidate instead of complaining about what people en masse choose.
I’m complaining about the donors, which are the subject of the article. Jasmine Crockett isn’t talking about what the, “people en masse,” are choosing, she’s talking about who the high dollar voters are trying to select in advance of the primaries:
Major donors are excited about “one specific candidate,” Crockett responded.
“I had a donor on the phones with me, telling me that all the donors are lining up behind that candidate,” she said. “So I can tell, and I tell you, it’s not a Black person nor a woman.”
“So they have, quote unquote, ‘they,’ have chosen,” she added. “When I say ‘they,; it’s the same donors that most likely had their opinions about Joe Biden and moved… So like, that would be the “they” that I would talk about.”
Telling someone they should be, “promoting the primaries,” and, “helping pick a candidate,” under an article where a Congresswoman is warning people that billionaires are trying to select, “the safest white boy,” is deeply out of touch. I’ve gotten involved in most of my local primaries since 2008, but I don’t have a Super PAC, so I don’t get to help pick the candidate as much as Mark Cuban does.
I didn’t realize the primaries scored your vote quality based on net worth. /s
Articles like this are seeding doubt and giving a reason not to vote for the DNC when the most popular candidate wins. We should support the DNC candidate regardless of how much more or less monied interests like them.
I’m not tolerating this nonsense anymore. The primaries are not a fair, open contests where the most popular candidate wins. Moneyed interests and party insiders heavily influence the outcome, and Democrats don’t even pretend otherwise. Jasmine Crockett, a U.S. Congresswoman, just told you that the donors are trying to pick the 2028 candidate now. Rep. Adam Smith admitted that Biden was picked by insiders to defeat Sanders:
I’ve said this over and over again; Joe Biden was not picked in 2020 because he was the only person that could beat Trump. He was picked because he was the only person that could beat Bernie Sanders, rightly or wrongly…That conclusion was made, okay? “Oh my gosh, coming out of Nevada, Bernie Sanders is going to be the nominee!” And people, just like they are now, said, “Ahhh, I don’t think that’s going to work,” so they were looking for an alternative.
Rep. Harold Ford said the same thing:
I was an elite that supported you in 2020, and said that we should do everything we possibly could do to advantage you against Bernie Sanders, because I thought Bernie Sanders’ politics were detrimental to the party and to the country.
This isn’t some psy-op to spread doubt. These are sitting Congressmen admitting that the party and the donors coordinated around Biden because they feared Sanders popularity. And this is just 2020. Donna Brazil wrote a book about the fuckery that went on in 2016, and you can google Dean Phillips if you want to find out how Democrats ruin a party member who dares primary an unpopular president.
I’m not saying Jasmine Crockett and the Independent are part of some big psy-op but they’re absolutely buying the lie that “not every DNC is the absolute best option”.
At the end of the day the DNC does not change platforms based on monied interests, and individual voters decide the primary outcome.
Biden beat Sanders by about 9 Million votes. It wasn’t even fucking close.
At the end of the day the DNC does not change platforms based on monied interests, and individual voters decide the primary outcome.
Mark Cuban was literally telling voters to ignore what was in Harris platform said because he could assure them she wouldn’t tax unrealized gains. If you really believe donors don’t set the policy, that’s adorable.
Biden beat Sanders by about 9 Million votes. It wasn’t even fucking close.
Bernie was kicking the shit out of everyone. Pete Buttigieg was seen as the only centrist alternative, and he was losing. Then Biden won one state (South Carolina) and Obama personally called Buttigieg to get him to drop out and endorse Biden. Klobuchar did the same. Biden went into super Tuesday with no real centrist competitors while Sander and Warren split the progressive vote. In the clip I showed you earlier, Adam Smith literally says that the party coordinated around Biden because, “coming out of Nevada, Bernie Sanders is going to be the nominee.” An Obama adviser even said Sanders was the only candidate Obama would speak out against:
Instead, he sees his role as providing guardrails to keep the process from getting too ugly and to unite the party when the nominee is clear. There is one potential exception: Back when Sanders seemed like more of a threat than he does now, Obama said privately that if Bernie were running away with the nomination, Obama would speak up to stop him.
So, yeah, he got 9 million more votes than him because the party carefully orchestrated their primaries to prop up Biden ahead of Super Tuesday. Then they changed the primary schedule so that South Carolina was the first state to vote in 2024 and made sure Biden had no real primary challengers. How’d that work out?
You’re believing Mark Cuban on Harris’ campaign more than
*checks notes
Kamala Harris?
This shit is why we lose to Trump.
They want centrist candidates, which the consultant class has convinced them is safe
They want centrist candidates and don’t care if they’re safe.
Yep. They want another billion in campaign donations, even if it ends in a loss.
I don’t think they’re even selling out. I think this is what they would be doing even if there weren’t money in it.
Maybe. Most Democrat politicians and consultants are just intending to cash in when they return to the private sector, or launder bribes through a book deal. Those payoff opportunities dry up, if they govern properly and don’t favor capitalists.
I think there’s legitimate self-delusion that keeps some of them believing the centrist is the safe choice. Some of them delude themselves into thinking that being centrist is a good idea because people don’t like, “wokeness.” Some of them convince themselves that if they’re too progressive, the donors will abandon them and they won’t have enough money to win. I think the old timers like Carvil legitimately think that centrism is the best strategy because they can’t get past 1992. But yeah, I think deep down, they would all prefer losing with a neoliberal centrist than winning with an actual progressive, even if some of them won’t admit it.
Yeah, they want to ride the edge and put forth the most conservative a candidate possible that still has a plausible road to victory (and the plausibility can be pretty thin). The last few candidates haven’t been anywhere close to just lining up with the most popular issues (either within the Democratic party or the larger electorate).
It’s just insane. People are so desperate for change that they’re willing to vote for fascism, and the Democrats are trying to put run a moderate conservative. If they’re not completely delusional, then they must believe the James Carvils of the party who are telling them they just have to wait for the Republicans to become unpopular again to take power. In the best case scenario, they’ll win in four years, then lose in another 4 (probably to a more competent fascist) because people will see they’re not doing anything for them.
I’m feeling deja vu from 2016. Hopefully the primary electorate has learned something that the establishment has not.
The problem is that the party has a lot of control over the primary; they can keep people off the ballot, they can decide who gets to debate, they can set a primary schedule that favors preferred candidates…The reason we got Biden in 2020 was because Barack Obama made a bunch of phone calls and got everyone who would have spit Biden’s vote share to drop out. Progressives need to spend the next four years calling out this corruption and excising these people from the party at the state and national levels.
Yes, it’s almost like overthrowing an established power is difficult. Who would have guessed.
Its zionism first, moderate conservative second.
I will vote for whoever isn’t the disgusting republican traitor. But give me fucking AOC, ffs.
Why would they, if they know you’ll vote for whoever isn’t republican
Good call. Best to not vote so they don’t even need to try to win your vote. /s
Why are .ml some of the dumbest people on Lemmy?
Best to not vote so they don’t even need to try to win your vote
So you admit that they’re openly not trying to win?
Why are .world so often equally dumb to the .ml?
If you know a certain group doesn’t vote in large numbers, why would you try to win their vote. If progressives actually voted in primaries or down ballot, Bernie would have won the primary and several other lower politicians would be progressive.
I voted for Bernie, but I actually vote in every election, primary, and fill out the entire ballot. I’ve had countless arguments with people calling themselves “progressives” that claim not voting is not inaction. The claim by sitting on their ass at home they are sending a message. And in a way they are, just not the message they think.
I’d vote for a literal dog at this point as long as it had competent, non fascist advisors.
Even if it were a yellow dog? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_dog_Democrat
Your Republicans and most Democrats are two sides of the same medal
They’re both funded by the same
peoplecorporations, so many of their goals are the same.
Crockett said Democrats have ‘this fear’ about voting for a woman again after Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton lost
Both had a VP named Tim. Need to run a third trial where a safe white man runs with a VP candidate with the name Tim to confirm that isn’t the issue.
DNC donors want a corporate stooge for president who does nothing and says nothing they don’t approve of.
