Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders rally Democrats, calling for a party that 'fights harder'
The two progressive lawmakers kicked off the western part of their "Fighting Oligarchy" tour Thursday, with stops in Nevada and Arizona.
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.
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 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.
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.
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
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.
Bernie is pushing the 2028 presidential candidates.
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?
We need a democratic party that fights ... just that .. that will do something besides just expose their belly.
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!
Too little, too late.
I'll vote for a Bernie AOC ticket if it ever materializes but I won't hold my breath. You people keep expecting politicians to save you when we need to be taking a note from the French. Grassroots organization: labor strikes, boycotts, civil disobedience. It's the only thing these leeches understand.
New Democrat motto
Dems are the establishment, both parties are full of old pieces of shit I think Bernie is the only decent one and he's promoting stuff that we have in Europe and is basic for a rich western democracy.
Nothing is gonna change unless people start rioting and protesting in the streets like the fucking French do, go set a few precints on fire and the ruling noble class will notice you once you kick a few of their loyal uniformed dogs
We in Europe won’t have that stuff for long if people keep voting these fascists adjacent parties into power.
Bernie is kinda as bad as your run off the mill democrat candidate. He's just more palatable to capture young and progressive vote, but he refused to call the genocide by what it is, and has been a defender of Zionism in the past.
Dems are just a bunch of empty chairs.
Sucks, but it's also an opportunity. Plenty of space for progressives to move in and take over.
It's mostly the consultant class morons that suck. Both parties used to be full of consultants until 2010-2015 with the rise of the tea party / trumpism. The GOP kicked most of the consultants to the curb, but the Democrats are still running campaigns like it's 2008 and the voters give a shit about the color tie the candidate is wearing.
Harris would've been a good candidate had she not been market researched to death.
I obviously don't agree with TDS-having morons that believe that all experts are useless, but expertise should really be evaluated every once in a while. It's clear to me from my field that professional management and consultants are often goldbricking idiots with impressive resumes and few actual professional accomplishments.
Unfortunately this just isn't true. It's not the consultant class that made AOC cry on the floor of the House for not wanting to fund Israel's iron dome, it was Nancy Pelosi. The whole infrastructure is corrupt with wall street money. It wasn't the consultant class that disciplined each every squad member into toeing the party line, not coming out guns blazing for progressive candidates and calling for primaries against corporate Dems, it's the party leadership.
Their average age is just under 60. I'd vote for it, if I we're still allowing that kind of thing
Now there's a ticket.
They should make their own party with blackjack and hookers. A third party that isn't sleepwalking like the democrats could actually win in this shitshow
Not sure how you envision this. It’s not a winning strategy to have a third party run for election. The best outcome by far is if AOC is the Democratic presidential candidate in 2028.
Lincoln was a Whig before a 'third' party came along. The calls for a new party aren't necessarily to form a third party. They are calls to form a party in power.
Apparently it's not a winning strategy to have Democrats run for elections either, so what's there to lose?
You think the DNC would let AOC anywhere near candidacy? They torpedoed Bernie. They seem quite content with their failing platform.
That's already happening without a new party. AOC has got some of the thickest skin in DC, she'd be fine.
A new party isn't going to go anywhere without big established names leaving the Democrats and leading the new one though.
They'd need to start ASAP, though.
The Dems need to do a lot of things. I don't really believe it's possible.
For one, if they continue to be owned by corporations, then no change will happen.
If We The People don't actually have a say in party nominees, no change will happen.
If they keep bending over to "cross the aisle", no change will happen. Stop trying to be the "good guy" and fucking fight for the party platform.
And that platform needs to shift away from the wants of rich liberals. Progressives need a voice.
Great to see from these two.
They are both uncharismatic leaders. Bernie is old. Ocasio-Cortez doesn't understand economics
You likely don't know shit about economics. That's why you still think it's important to vaguely allude to economics as an important element to understand in politics when really it's just a smoke screen used to tell people that policies that make their lives miserable are all very well and good actually. 🧐🎩
Economic "experts" running policy on the basis of laughably bad classroom economic theory -- save those from the behavioral economics realm that generate testable, falsifiable hypotheses -- are a big reason why the middle class has gone down the tubes in this country for 50 years.
To be fair, no body understands 'economics' and age has not stopped Putin, Xi, Trump or a whole list of evil people get and keep power so why say Bernie is too old?
I'd love to be wrong, but while they talk a lot neither of these two are accomplishing much on that front either. And no, I don't mean their voting history.
Messaging is important. While the Republicans are saying "There's some temporary pain, but it'll all sort itself out in the end. We just need to get through this transition, and the tarrifs and deportations will MAGA", there needs to be a counter-argument.
They're (thankfully) not preaching to the choir. They're going to Republicans and independents and explaining in these rallies that there's an oligarchy that has taken control, made them poorer, and it will get worse.
If they can convince enough people of the real causes, they have a broader base, and potentially even some new progressives.
lol Republicans messaging is always that BS. Just like trying to get rid of Obamacare.
"it'll sort itself out".
Yes, with lots of death and money lost.
They're going to Republicans and independents and explaining in these rallies that there's an oligarchy that has taken control, made them poorer, and it will get worse.
I doubt Republicans are attending these rallies; good chance most of the people attending are blue-leaning voters (which exist everywhere in the same way red-leaning voters exist in California).
If they can convince enough people of the real causes, they have a broader base, and potentially even some new progressives.
That's true, but the problem is twofold here: First, without strong leadership willing to take to the streets all this messaging will never lead to action. Messaging is important, but it's not everything. Second, America is going fascist at breakneck speed and doesn't have the time for progressives slowly build up a base of support. This is a time of crisis, and both the Squad specifically and the American progressive movement in general are letting a good crisis go to waste (which incidentally is not how you solve a crisis). Everyone to the left of Ronald Reagan is acutely aware that something needs to be done, and many want someone to give them something to do. Bernie simply doesn't give people anything to do—which even in the best of times this is a big problem with how he does things—but right now it's downright suicidal.
Edit: Typo.
