The DNC and the rest of the Dem establishment would rather lose than adopt any meaningful progressivism or allow for a progressive candidate.
Their primary motivation, and quite possibly their only motivation, is collecting as much soft money as possible.
And that interest is actually well served by losing, and in fact, that appears to be their preference. If they lose, then they don’t need to run in the next election on any platform other than stopping the Republicans from causing even more harm, which saves them having to promise their supporters things that they’ll then have to arrange to somehow fail to deliver even if they have a majority. It’s easier just to lose, then to run merely on being “not Republicans.”
And the one thing that would upset that gravy train is ending up with an actual progressive in a powerful position. A progressive would not only promise things the establishment democrats would prefer to not even mention, but would mean it. And even worse yet, they’d then try to actually deliver on their promises. And that would alienate the big money, which pays for policies that favor themselves, and most assuredly NOT policies that favor the common people.
So yes - if the Democrats want to win, they self-evidently need to appeal to progressives. But that’s been the case since 2016, and it’s made zero difference and it’s going to continue to make zero difference, because they’d rather lose than adopt any meaningful progressivism.
Need a third party so so badly. Even if not to win just to make the point that neoliberalism isn’t a progressive cause.
It’s fledgling, but check out https://www.votelabor.org/ It’s a small but growing group of Americans who want to start a party that advocates for the working class. I jumped in yesterday and am gonna try to do my part. There’s channels for every state to organize amongst their state peers, national channels for overall organization, policy discussions currently under debate, and desire to start getting people on ballots and in seats as soon as possible
There’s nothing on that website about who runs that party.
It had better not be the unions. Most US labor unions are just as compromised as the Democrats. That’s a lasting legacy from the Red Scare and also working-class white racism.
I really got swept up in the stop trump fever the last 5 years and really forgot about this. For some reason I was convinced they were the good guys.
What do you think can realistically be done, or will likely happen
Any solution to the Trump/MAGA/fascism problem is not going to involve the Democratic Party. It’s too compromised. Their so-called centrists are already trying to cut deals with the Republicans (fuck you, Fetterman), and the rest are doing all they can to block the small progressive faction. They’re like those teams that play the Globetrotters.
100% all of this
but progressives are not the ones writing Biden and the rest of the politicians’ checks so unlikely the Democrats will do anything different in 2028 such as listen to progressives
Harris told the progressives to shut up in the election we just had while she partied hardy with Republicans at celebrity filled galas
ain’t shit going to change
Never forget that in the final days of the election when Kamala was bleeding supporters from the left, she went on stage with Liz fucking Cheney and said the only thing she’d do different from Biden would be to have a Republican in her cabinet. That’s how much the Dems love the Right and hate progressives.
The DNC just denied AOC. There is absolute zero chance they will change anything in 2028.
While it’s nice to dream, even the author of this piece acknowledges he is doing exactly that.
It’s unlikely that the insiders who built a system that enriches themselves—guaranteeing profits whether the party wins or loses—will willingly dismantle it. Yet that is exactly what is required.
If he knows it won’t happen this way It kinda boggles me what exactly he’s laying out here. He identifies the issue, then he hides from the implications of his own assertion.
He goes on.
Unfortunately, one of the first major tests of whether the Democratic Party was prepared to take progressives seriously—the vote on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s bid to be the ranking member of the Oversight Committee—revealed troubling signs of continued resistance to the grassroots wing of the party.
If he hadnt mentioned this, i woulda. This is a huge sign of the partys intentions, further indication he is right.The fact the Democratic party fresh offa loss this bad… changes nothing, in fact signals their intentions are to lose rather than changea thing.
Why does he then tell progressive to 'get the establishment to listen? Listen to what? Are progressives to assume, after author explicitly tells them otherwise, that merely talking to the establishment dems (who only care about enriching themselves) will do a 180 and help reform democracy?
Give me a break with this crap man! If he’s gonna acknowledge the Democratic party is rotten to the point where they don’t care to win, how can he write the rest of this daydream with a straight face? It feels like he lost the thesis he started with
Liberal Democrats: Well, we didn’t fucking ask you!
Not gonna happen under Pelosi and the current DNC leadership
It’s no secret to progressives that authoritarian agendas thrive when working-class voters feel abandoned
It’s nice they included this statement as the first sentence. It’s lets you know right up front that if you don’t accept this premise, then the conclusions that follow are going to be incoherent.
Progressives need to realize that Marxism is a fine tool for some problems and not the answer to every question. It’s not just the economy, stupid.
Marxism is so much more than the economy, and arguably has nothing to do with the economy at all, that’s Marxist-Engelsism. Marxism proper is just a philosophy of social history.
Progressive ECONOMIC policies. Getting dragged into culture war issues is the divide and conquer strategy utilized by the parasite class to keep us all fighting each other.
Don’t worry. In addition to abandoning progressive economic policies, Democrats have done as you suggested and have started throwing vulnerable minorities under the bus. Democrats put anti-trans hate in their own ads during the 2024 election, and overwhelmingly voted against trans people in the latest defense spending bill.
Democrats should have adopted progressive economic policies. The problem is, when they run on anything even remotely progressive, it gets killed by the current manchin and the entire party acts like this wasn’t the intention from the very beginning. They have no remaining credibility with economic progressives.
So now they’re ditching what credibility they had with social progressives as well.
