How do you destroy the notion that Democrats are the good guys? Americans seem like a lost cause on that regard
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/27293783
If they haven’t accepted it yet, I’m not sure they want to. The ones holding the lines seem to be just reactionaries pining for a return to the neoliberal status quo.
DUPOLOY
They've had multiple majority governments and you guys still pay an arm and a leg for diabetes medication.
Funnily enough, the last administration made some headway there for Medicare recipients... Unfortunately, it looks like that's now been undone.
"The United States is also a one-party state but, with typical American extravagance, they have two of them."
I attribute the quote wrong all the time, but today the internet says it's from Julius Nyerere, who was a prime minister in Africa back in the 1960s.
This is quote from their former member, Huey Long:
"They've got a set of Republican waiters on one side and a set of Democratic waiters on the other side, but no matter which set of waiters brings you the dish, the legislative grub is all prepared in the same Wall Street kitchen"
— Huey Long, campaign speech for the re-election of Senator Hattie Caraway (D-AR), 1932 (Williams p. 589)
Huey was surprisingly based for a yankee politician
They literally have a donkey (jackass) as mascot.
I've seen a lot of similar comments lately. People wanting to start 3rd parties etc, because the Democrats suck so bad.
Yes, it's true. They suck, but if you're going to beat the Republicans, you'll need to look at what Trump did. He didn't start a 3rd party. No, he took the existing party and changed it into whatever the fuck it is now.
You need to change the democratic party from within too, because 3rd parties will always lose because of the first past the post. 3rd parties also have a tendency to branch out, because quite frankly, not being Democrat or Republican isn't enough of a politic in itself, and you guys don't get along well on anything else. The Republicans had this issue for a long time until Trump came along providing them with something that united their voters more than the previous politic of simply being not Democrats.
The democratic party already has a framework for running politics and they actually have some kind of democracy within that allows people to change it. Yeah, it will require a lot of work to get enough people engaged in politics to make the change, but it is absolutely much less than what is required to start a successful 3rd party.
The difference with the Republican party's changes with Trump and the idea of performing entryism in the Democrats to make it a worker party is that Trump's changes to the GOP are already in line with what the Bourgeoisie wants. The DNC cannot be entered and changed into a working class party because they too get their base from the bourgeoisie.
This is why revolution is necessary to gain real change in favor of the working class.
The DNC cannot be entered and changed into a working class party because they too get their base from the bourgeoisie.
I think this is too pessimistic, especially in light of how bad all other options are for the left. Party bases change -- Democrats used to be a lot closer to the working class, and (decades ago) delivered major policy improvements. With a lot of jobs re-proletarianizing, who's to say the party base can't shift back?
The biggest barrier to such a change is campaign donations, of course. But Bernie showed you can fund even a major presidential campaign through small donors, and we're also at the point where corporate Dems have more money than they can effectively use (see the Harris campaign).
Your problem is that Democrat politicians are also largely rich white dudes, who'd rather be republican than progressive.
.. that is why you need to join and elect other politicians.
So why not join the majority party — in this case the GOP — and reshape it again from the inside? We’ve seen the GOP is open to tectonic shifts of change, as long as it’s coming from fellow “Republicans.” Donnie himself was a Democrat before he noticed the door to the GOP was already open wide.
It's always going to be more difficult challenging the "winning" strategy.
Democrats seem to be more open to change and internal democracy.
Whatever shed of ideology is left in either party is also pointed in different directions. Roughly described, the ideologies are (supposed to be) that left wing is taking ideas from the masses and sending them upwards through democratic elections, while right wing only accepts top down decision making. Seeing the many "Trump regret" clips, it's pretty clear that his policies did not originate from his voter base.
Another case of point is when politicians flip flop and change party. Democrats allow right wing politicians to infiltrate their party dragging them to the right, whereas you don't see someone like Bernie Sanders joining GOP to drag them towards social democracy.
People wanting to start 3rd parties etc, because the Democrats suck so bad.
Great way to have Republicans in power for the rest of our lives. I can't see how anyone who voted 3rd party in November can STILL think it was a smart decision despite immediately finding out it wasn't.
One of the most frustrating things in my whole life is how people simply cannot grasp that you cannot cheat code your way to voting a 3rd party presidential candidate into the Oval Office. Like, is it that difficult for people to understand that parties have to start winning locally, then getting representatives in state offices, then in the House and Senate, before a new party could even stand a snowball's chance in Hell of winning a presidential election?
These fools need to stop fucking around with presidential election votes and start voting for a 3rd party in their local/state elections. Totally fucking pointless to vote 3rd party for president. You're literally just ushering in Republican presidents by doing that shit.
As you said, it's far more realistic to put pressure on the Democratic party to change than engage in a fantasy scenario where everyone holds hands and votes a 3rd party into power out of literally nowhere.
But, as you can see by your downvotes, people just want what they want right now. Logic be damned.
"Logic be damned."
That'll be inscribed on America's tombstone.
It's the most anti-communist country on the planet, so there's not much hope. Talk of raising wages or organizing collectively, or not agreeing with US imperialist foreign policy gets you labelled a commie / tankie by its witch-hunting, McCarthyite majority.
If there's a list of countries to next take the communist road, the US would be dead last.
democrats are simply the 'lesser evil', and have been since the 1960s, at least.. and we've needed a viable third party left of the mainstream for longer.
republican administrations drag us down and undo gains made. democrats repair some of the damage--but never quite enough, never push progress enough. they lose. it gets undone again and the cycle repeats.
but now it's all getting destroyed. there may not be a continuation of the cycle. it's hell from here on until 'trumpism' and maga are what is completely destroyed.
Yeah.
There is always that cycle that includes "Democrats didn't do everything they promised so they deserve to suffer", which brings in Republicans that cause far more damage.
And given the number of election cycles, you would think there would be some organization by now for overall leftist causes, but there isn't. There is no party or organization out there that can pose an electoral threat. The right produced the TEA party, which morphed to MAGA. Leftists have nothing.
@Confidant6198@lemmy.ml I thought we were finally making progress with Rank Choice Voting starting to gain traction, but agree... there may not be enough left to salvage after this unless the MAGA movement collapses before the midterms... assuming we still are have elections and people other than white land owners can vote. Still not entirely sure how far back Trump supporters need to go for the "again" point when America was great.
MAGA are NOT the majority of Americans, but sadly they only slightly exceed the Americans who don't vote at all. While not the government many Americans wanted, when "I'm not into politics" stopped resulting in an immediate response of "so you aren't American?", we ended up with the government we deserve.
Democrats destroyed it when Chuck Shumer sided with Republicans. It is Joever.
I posted this and to my utter amazement both the comments and votes went completely opposed to my expectations:
Stop re-electing these ancient incumbents who are WAY too comfortable being Republican-lite. Vote for younger candidates, preferably someone who was born AFTER the Battle of the Bulge.
I don't think that makes a difference. Ben Shapiro is young and is alt-right
I think it makes a huge difference- Shapiro is just one person. And to prove the point, look how much influence he, a young guy, is having on our political landscape. Not that they're the perfect politicians, but look at how much support people like AOC and Tulsi Gabbard drum up. We need people that are energized and that can energize others.
Is Ben Shaprio a democrat candidate?
The Deprogram podcast, Hakim, and Second Thought YT channels all exist to address this. It's rather obvious to anybody willing to learn
Complaining about Marxist-Leninists on a platform made by MLs and the instance maintained by them is a bit silly. There's nothing "crypto" about support for Communism on Lemmy.
Moreover, I find that the ones most critical of the USSR, as in the ones best looking at what honestly and truthfully went wrong with the Soviet Union, are MLs. It's easy to regurgitate "100 gorillion dead no iphone vuvuzela," but that isn't particularly critical as it isn't based in reality, just non-sequitors and gotchas.
Meanwhile, MLs can usually talk in depth about the issues with Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and even Kruschev's reforms, or the struggles with planning by hand in a computerized era, discussion on whether or not the NEP should have been modified, extended, or eliminated even earlier or right on time, and more. This is because MLs want to use the Soviet Union as an example, learn from the good and learn from the bad so we can more effectively build a Socialist future.
Realistically, it's an impossibility. This view is mostly propagated via liberal news sources, having the main battle be conservatism vs progressivism or left vs right (as opposed to class struggle, the poor vs rich, working class vs capitalists), and since the democrats are more progressive than republicans, they're the "good guys" who should be supported.
For it to be destroyed, we'd have to catch up to their level of influence and reach or even surpass it, to show people that they're a party of capitalists who sometimes are progressive, and not an actual ally of the working or middle classes but only pretending to be one. Maybe going one step further too and influencing progressive movements democrats support to pay attention to economic aspects too, given how their root causes aren't purely social?
But again, it's impossible for us workers to have such reach, given how well funded media is.
Cause they aren't, they are just the "better guys".
They're basically "republicans light": still bad but at least not literal nazis
Step 1: Don't generalize. Don't say "Americans" when you mean "some Americans". As you can see from browsing here and on other media sites, there are a great many vocal people who have voted Democrat for years but are entirely disappointed by decades of failed DNC leadership.
Step 2: Remind people that everyone is on their own side. Politicians might vote the way you want, or not, but their interests will never be exactly the same as yours. Don't ever believe that the two-party system is an accurate description of our values.
Step 3: Share memes of Schumer.
"Some Americans" is still a generalization. Generalizations are extremely useful. We cannot function without them. Perhaps you mean to say, don't over-generalize.
We don't have to do anything other then work on passing electoral reform one state at a time. Democrats can be whatever the hell they want, so long as everyone is free to vote how they want with the ability to transfer their vote.
Historically, that doesn't actually fix systemic issues, though, like the only parties of relevance electorally being pre-approved and backed by the bourgeoisie. Moreover, electoral reform doesn't have a real path to implementation that would make more sense than revolution to begin with.
This has never done anything in countries that use it, like SK, Japan, Australia, etc. It might make the candidate stacking a little more expensive, but that's it.
If capital stands above the political system, the method of voting doesn't matter.
Can’t do it . You must just get labelled a Russian bot and banned
I'm ready for my ban I guess.
Because three real fight is the rich vs the poor. Even rich democrats.
Also this. As NOFX says, Americas for sale, and you can get a good deal on it, and make a healthy profit. Fucking Pelosi and her kind gotta go
Believe you me, I've been trying for years. Tribalism runs too deep in the human condition for there to be any obvious fix.
We need progressive primary challengers, and we need PARTICIPATION in the primaries. Primary voter turnout is like 15% or something equally pathetic last I checked.
That's more because Primary candidates are all pre-selected and don't stand to change the system. Voter apathy is high bevause voter will isn't represented by the dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie.
The super delegate bs with Bernie in 2016 was definitely a ridiculous situation, I don't know what to say about that.
Yup.
Millions of Americans LOVE complaining about our presidential nominees but are nowhere to be found during the primaries. Can't be bothered to be proactive. Can only be bothered to complain after the fact.
they're not good guys they are simply more competent at government
Many Americans don't like either party at this point. Thus the low voter turnout and apathy. Many vote Democrat as the lesser of two evils. Though, the goalpost keep getting pushed to the right, to the point that Democratic party is well right of center. I understand the apathy at this point. But I wish that people understood that if we want things to come back to the left, then we're going to have to vote overwhelmingly Democratic for a while. And not just every four years. Everybody whines the Democrats don't get anything done when they're elected. But they generally only have two years of majority in the house, Senate, because they can't be bothered to vote every two years...
Without electoral reform, there's no functional reason to. The lesser evil of the current system is Democrats. If you want to enact change, push support for the progressive wing of the party and push for electoral reform.
Your title should have read "How do you destroy the notion that Republicans are the good guys?"
There are far too many Americans that support the far right. They've been convinced that conservatism will protect their interests, even while it blatantly destroys them. It is a morally greater objective to turn these people around, and more practically achievable, than undermining its opponent.
Yes, we know. You think liberalism is an ally of conservatism, not an opponent. We're all very impressed with your extensive knowledge, bravo. You've shown nuanced and deep understanding of the political landscape by criticizing the contender of the enemy.
I think most people who criticize the left are like you. More interested in stroking their egos than actually solving a problem. You're trying to demonstrate mastery of a subject by being critical of it, not because you want it to change but because you want people to be impressed with you.
If you actually wanted things to get better you'd be teaching people to undermine conservatism, which is the greater threat.
Be better.
Conservativism is a wing of liberalism, though. They are based in the same general underlying understanding of economics and methods of solving social problems. Right here you accuse OP of wanting to stroke their ego more than solve a problem, but I don't believe that's the case at all. You believing in a different solution does not mean they aren't also trying to solve problems, this is more of a character assassination than anything else.
Conservativism cannot truly be undermined without also undermining liberalism. Leftists must organize, millitant labor organizing remains the most effective means of combatting conservativism, and is held outside the realm of liberal problem solving, usually. In my opinion, we cannot effectively combat conservativism without also addressing liberalism.
It is a morally greater objective to turn these people around, and more practically achievable, than undermining its opponent.
The task is to build a mass movement to the left of Democrats. Are you going to have better luck building that out of the many Democrats who are disillusioned by the ineffectiveness of their party? Or is it going to be easier to bring in the folks cheering seig heils at Republican events?
Why is it always homophobia and misogyny are the go-tos for people describing their hatred for Marxists?
Republicans already did that.