Mark my words: they will put Kamala 2.0. or Gavin in the race for president instead of AOC or any other progressive.

I still feel like the dnc is going to lean heavy into Buttigieg. He's young, an eloquent speaker, a sharp debater. He clearly is down to play ball with the dnc establishment as they want him to (stepped aside for Biden to get a cabinet position) , and they hope that he's baggage free enough (Kamala and her Marijuana prosecutions) that progressives will vote for him. Yes, he's gay, and the hardcore magats won't like that, but I think older suburban voters would rather have someone sane that's gay than insane and straight.

The reason Bernie never won the dem primary is that less people voted for him
- All voters fall out of coconut trees.

If you don't like trump and you didn't vote, then you're to blame.
My country has compulsory voting so nobody has an excuse
- Is you didn't vote for Harris, you're to blame.
  
  No, it's the Republicans who are to blame. The Democratic leadership is to blame for not putting up a candidate or policies that the voters wanted.
  It's always amazing to me that people will blame the people who couldn't stomach to vote for the Democrats, rather than getting mad at the Democratic leadership for being so awful that people can't stomach to vote for them.

Really, how do we get viable third parties? How do we change the voting system to not have " spoiler candidates "? The binary is rotting us.
- You go out and work in the primaries.
  Look at AOC. The guy she ousted was a mainstay of the NY Democratic Party for decades.
  If you wait until the general election you get no input.
  
  But that's not the end of it as this still maintains the binary. First, what are the measures for getting third parties on the ballot? Second, how do we get rid of the fptp system so that we can actually vote for candidates we like, rather than the lesser of two evils?
  Edit: I responded too quickly at work, and fixed it up later.
- How? Probably not via voting in 2028 or holding a sign. As in, not within the pre-existing failing/failed system. This one isn't gonna recover.
  After the people are in charge of the smouldering ashes, you can start from scratch! The one upside. Assuming USA doesn't just submit passively and end up like Russia with a broken people for centuries, which is what I'm expecting.
  Copy Canadians. Including the limits on campaign length, so your news cycle isn't so endlessly exhausting. No wonder 1/3rd have totally tuned out. IMO scrap FPTP like we didn't have the balls to do.
  
  I guess that's the crux of the question: does it really require smoldering ashes to get this done? Entrenched power is obviously tough times, but within the system we currently have what are the possibilities?
- 1.) Federally and statewide, you've got to vote for the party that isn't making Ranked Choice or Star voting illegal, for starters.
  2.) Locally, third parties have to actually run local candidates. They are a vanity party otherwise.
  If you can't manage those two things, math & chaos theory guarantees that you'll never have a 3rd party.
  
  I want Approval Votingand Sequential Proportional Approval Voting, but will support any electoral reform referendum or bill.
- how do we get viable third parties?
  By having a third party that's willing to put in the work and do things the right way.
  So, instead of having a do-nothing candidate like Jill Stein who shows up right before every election, then disappears again after only obtaining a half of a single percent of the total votes, we'd have to have a third party that started focusing on winning local/state elections. That would allow them to start having more than ZERO members in the houses of Congress, which is currently the case. And once they have members in Congress, from various districts around the country, then they'd have a real chance at running a presidential candidate who can win.
  Make no mistake. Anyone that currently votes for a 3rd party candidate for president is an utter fool. And there are A LOT of them on Lemmy. A 3rd party cannot win. They are nowhere near winning. Because they haven't put in the work to create a coalition to actually start having a presence in our government.
  
  Don’t neglect that Stein was a Russian plant to spoil the election. Follow the money and Stein’s activities pre and post election.
- Not by going directly for a moonshot at the presidency. You spend years getting people involved in local politics, then work your way up. State and local governments have power, even if it's "boring".
  That or a coup or other violent, abrupt, wildcards.
  
  Local government isn't boring. It's infuriating. It's like if you gave the worst HOAs a police force.
- Have you considered just having like a local group organized around something like pro-labor or just the community in general.
  Elect officers or organize how you think best. Call meeting invite guess to speak to issues you all like. When elections come around try to solicit questions to all the campaigns. Have the organization vote as a group on who to endorse or not at all.
  If it's worth the effort, work the campaigns for the folks you all endorse.
  More people did that stuff then starting a third party in state would be easy. From there you go forward. If you do well or brand then you may have others in their region wanting to do the same. National two parties are federations of these groups with more binding Charters.
  Many States have these hurdles for recognized political parties but they can't stop folks from just organizing how they want.
- What you need is a Bernie Sanders funding his own political party, then recruit the AOC and likes. Then they constantly for 20 years present on themselves and refuse to compromise with Democrats and call them on their bullshit whatsoever.
  But idk why they didn't do it sad for you

Back in the day, Abraham Lincoln did not vow to end slavery if elected.
Frederick Douglas worked for Lincoln, because Lincoln was the best candidate.

"They will put up x candidates I dislike"
Vote in the fucking primaries then, holy shit. Make a progressive win the primaries for the love of God please

Okay but the point is they should've been able to run a wet paper bag against Trump and win.
- Dems chose someone worse than a wet paper bag.
  
  It wasn't the wrong candidate, it was the wrong campaign.
  The Dems stood in front of an electorate crippled by 4 years of rising cost of living and said "Look how good the economy is! GDP is up! Employment is up!" The electorate said "We can't afford eggs," and the Dems said "Shut the fuck up our economy is great how dare you say otherwise you worthless peasant!"
  The Dems never stopped to consider that high GDP is meaningless if all the money ends up in the hands of billionaires and high employment is meaningless if everyone is working three jobs to make rent. Biden refused to allow any daylight between himself and Kamala on any issue, so they ended up just presenting a new wrapper on the same shit sandwich.
  Trump meanwhile said "I hear you, everything is too expensive. I'll solve it by blaming immigrants and doing some magic involving something called tariffs that I promise will make everything cheaper." Now, none of that is actually a solution, but that didn't matter, because when you yell "Help, I'm drowning!" and one person says "No you're not", while the other says "Yes you are and it's because of brown people..." you don't really listen to anything past the "Yes you are," because the point is they apparently want to help you and the other person doesn't. Trump didn't need to have workable solutions, because the Dems forfeited the entire contest before it even started. Trump just had to show up and sit in the chair.
  
  I dunno. Pretty sure a wet paper bag would have been better than a felon rapist traitor who's shitting on our Constitution and tanking our economy.
- 🔴

We have two corporate parties, the status quo and the controlled opposition. They occasionally switch labels but until we get the corporate out, we will never have a real choice.

Get ready for the next DNC nominee no longer being the "lesser evil"!

Aoc said she would stay in the HOUSE, felt like she could do more there than the presidency, or governership.

Silly to think our votes will ever count again
- If the fascists truly believed your votes don't/won't count in the future, they wouldn't be working so hard to take away voting rights.
  I think we're dangerously close to a point where voting won't matter, but we're not there yet. Look at the Wisconsin Supreme Court race a few weeks ago. Elon Musk got involved and personally spent more than $25 million to try to buy the race. He was directly paying off voters to vote for the Republican. There was nearly $100 million spent on the race, an overwhelming majority of which was spent by/for the Republican.
  Yet the Democrat won with like 10 percentage points more of the vote. She blew the Musk funded fascist out of the water. It wasn't even close.
  If voting really didn't matter at all, do you really think that would have been the outcome?
  If voting really didn't matter at all, would they be actively trying to strip voting rights away from women right now?
  Don't fall for the fascist propaganda. Voting still matters. It's not the only thing that matters. We should all be way more engaged in politics than merely voting. But voting still matters, too.
  
  All good points. I hope you’re right but our civil rights are being stripped very fast

You mean Hilary. This is clearly the chance to beat that dead horse again!

Friendly reminder that the goal behind posting memes like this is to instill a sense of cynicism and discourage political participation from people who hold progressive values. A key indicator here is the use of the nefarious-but-nebulous "they" which is commonly used in antisemitic-coded "globalist" or "cabal" conspiracy theories.
Democracy in America is unequal and unfair but the "deep state" the way conspiracy theorist portray it is simply not real.
- This isn't trying to discourage people from voting, it's trying to send a warning: "If you keep putting in terrible candidates and running on terrible policies, you are going to keep getting shitty turnouts"
- Accusing OP of posting crypto-antisemitism for using the word “they” in the title of a post that has an extremely clear, literally labeled target (the DNC, if you look at the second panel) feels extremely disingenuous.
  
  It also has nothing to do with discouraging political participation, but rather encouraging more active political participation in processes outside of simply voting intermittently. When both choices offered are dogshit, or no choice is presented in the first place, the point isn't to say "all hope is lost give up" but rather "this is broken in a way that voting will not fix."
  When the DNC is actively doing things such as obfuscating the very clear decline of the sitting president in order to bypass the primary process and install Harris, or ratfucking someone like Bernie via super delegates, media control, and so on in '16, this was not done by some "nefarious-but-nebulous they". It's very explicitly the DNC. Harris was one of the least popular candidates in '20, one of the first to drop from the race, and her term as vice president did very little to ingratiate her to those she ostensibly represents.
  Whatever it is that needs to happen in order for people to get the sort of representation and principled opposition to fascism that most of them actually want, the DNC itself is obviously highly resistant or outright incapable of providing it. Voting alone will not fix this.
  (edited '16 to '20 for the Harris primary drop out, realized I'd gotten dates mixed up and double checked afterwards to confirm)
- You overcooked this one dawg. Just an easy dunk on the incompetence of the DNC.

Democrats would rather lose their power "temporarily" than lose their influence permanently with a progressive.
We need a third party like four months ago. We are running out of time to challenge the standing democrats.
- We need a third party like four months ago.
  Then tell one to do the back-breaking work over decades to start having members in Congress so they have a shot at winning a presidential election.
  There isn't some cheat code for a 3rd party candidate to become president.
- We already have multiple.
  inb4 Russia: liberals will say that about any new party, too
  
  Just here to point out that the 3rd party candidate with the most votes was Jill Stein with a whopping half of a single percent of the total votes cast.
  There is no viable 3rd party. And there won't be until they start working to get elected at the local/state level and start getting members in Congress.

AOC might not want to be POTUS though? It’s odd how many people have decided this for her.
- she said she doesnt want to be, felt like the house is a better situation for her. much like harris other vp candidates, one of them wasnt keen on being her vp at the moment, probably read the room.
- That just makes her more qualified!
  — Plato
- Times are desperate
  
  Ok? That still doesn’t mean she is obligated to pursue the office

We can't put up another woman for a decade or two at least. This country is too misogynistic to elect a woman.
- I'm not sure that's true. While yes, America does have a sexist problem, Hillary won the popular vote.
  I think the DNC just keeps putting up bad candidates, some of whom happen to be women

- If that's the case then we should just give up, because people are going to be fucking idiots like they've always been, so we'll never get anyone good in office ever.
- It's no use. Americans would much rather place blame on a candidate, one that was INFINITELY better than the other, than accept responsibility as an electorate for failing.
  Harris was perfectly fine. A successful prosecutor with a doctorate in law. She would have continued a progressive agenda. She would have maintained economic stability. I'm sure it wouldn't have been as progressive as many would like, but certainly better than our current state of affairs with a president who shits all over our Constitution and is tanking our economy 3 months in.
  The bottom line is the American electorate failed an open book test. Too many fools who chose to become single issue voters. Too many fools who thought it would be wise to vote for a 3rd party in a presidential election, despite having literally ZERO chance of winning. Too many fools who abdicated their responsibility as citizens in a democracy because they weren't pleased with their options. This was one of, if not the easiest, election we'll ever have in our lives. And we failed. Because we aren't a very intelligent society.
  
  She ran hard to the right, abandoning all of her previously stated progressive beliefs. She would have continued the shitty economy that Americans were upset with. She said she wouldn't do anything different than a highly unpopular president.
  Of course Americans blame the candidate, as they should. Her entire job was to get elected, opposing one of the least popular presidents we've ever had, and she lost. It should have been a slam dunk for her, but she gave all of that up, for money and genocide.
- Right, Harris was a good candidate, that's why her primary campaign lasted all the way to december of 2019.
  
  So your point is that it should have been Biden?
- For the record, I voted for her because she wasn't Trump. As a voter, I didn't much appreciate being assigned a Democratic candidate instead of given a chance to vote for one. I was even less thrilled about her insistence on cozying up to the likes of Liz Cheney because the DNC arrogantly thought they could court Republicans who didn't like Trump. Add in her denial that there's a genocide going on in Palestine or that the average American was economically hurting despite a booming stock market and you could probably see why not many people liked her.
  
  I like that America chose to microscopically analyze and criticize Harris while a felon rapist traitor who shits on our Constitution and tanks our economy waltzed into the Oval Office.
  Sounds like you ended up making the right decision, but so many others didn't. Couldn't see the forest for the trees. Because America is dumb.
- the dnc did underestimate hispanics and black male voters, who are traditionally conservative and culturally sexist as well. of course the constant propaganda dint help harris: roegan and griftersd.
- Yeah man I'm sure Winston Churchill, the drunken failure who lost his own easiest possible post WW2 election to Clement Attlee, is totally not blaming his loss to the voters and not his failure to run a proper public campaign.
  Harris was a good candidate
  Which is why she willingly chose to ignore millions of constituent demands, and banned an entire Democratic party ethnic base from partaking in the DNC because "fuck you, kiss Israel's ass lol".
  And that defnitley didn't backfire at all because voters love being told to eat shit and vote for the lesser evil, especially after not being able to participate in a primary where a candidate people actually wanted could at least be voted on.
  
  The bottom line is America isn't going to jeopardize their allegiance with Israel. They're our most important ally in the Middle East.
  So what you're really saying is you would have preferred if Democrats lied like Republicans and said during the election that they would put their foot down regarding Israel, only to take that back once elected.
  And honestly, I would agree with you. So many dumbasses in this country chose to vote 3rd party or not vote because of the whole Israel/Palestine thing that now a felon rapist traitor who shits on our Constitution and tanks our economy is president. So yeah, I kinda wish Democrats just pulled a Republican move and blatantly lied about their intentions during the election and then walked it all back after winning.
  Single issue voters/abstainers make me nauseous. Especially when so much is on the line.
  And now we're learning the hard way.
- Harris represented the Democratic party, but conceded numerous Republican talking points like immigration, highlighted that she was a gun owner, and campaigned with the Cheneys. Kamala refused to take a strong stance on Gaza giving little more than lip service to Palestinians and their supporters, rarely talked about ideas like universal healthcare or wealth inequality, and dismissed the general concerns about the economy.
  Voters failed, yes. They failed to turn out and prevent the obvious danger of another Trump presidency or were ignorant enough to vote for him. However, the Democratic leadership also failed. They hid the state of Joe Biden from the public until the last minute. They failed to engage their base and, for the third election in a row, boosted a middling candidate over progressive candidates and then relied on negative campaigni against Trump to provide enough of a turnout.
  
  i felt the israel thing has much less of effect on voters than you think, maybe in Michigan, but both parties wholely support the genocide, so theres not much issue there. its the constant attack by msm on biden and harris throughout the campaign
  
  Every time a progressive candidate has run in a primary they lost. The American public is one Facebook ad away from voting for a face eating Leopard. If they really wanted universal Healthcare they would have voted it by now. Voters failed, the dems run with the candidate that had the most chances of winning. And then the voters failed again. Twice.
- I can understand why a German would think a far right cop was a good candidate in general, but no. She was a terrible candidate for anyone not voting republican.
  
  Hey american socialist here.
  Harris wasn't that bad. Y'all are so extremely radicalized you can't even admit a good candidate when you see one.
  None of this shit would've happened that's for sure

This debate is so silly because the real cause has to do with economic conditions and not the small policy differences between Kamala and Bernie or whoever the left wanted.
- That's a privileged ass take right there. You think the difference between kamala's policy's and universal healthcare and state paid high education are small?
  
  I’m speaking from the perspective of American voters. But it’s actually the opposite. The privileged can research and think about bigger reforms like universal healthcare. But I think most voters just wanted prices to go down.
- TIL genocide is a small policy difference for libs.
  
  Did you really just learn this?
  I’m saying from the perspective of American voters. And for them, yes, genocide in a faraway place is a small issue. If they’re even aware it’s happening at all.
  But also, I don’t think the policy differences here are that impactful. I don’t see the US stopping the genocide without going to war, which I don’t see any appetite for from anyone.
  
  Stop expecting the US to oppose genocide.
  We're never going to oppose genocide.
  Genocide is part of what built this country.

Ah, the classic "Dems would have won if they ran to the left" + "Left-wingers couldn't have ushered in the fascist; we're too small to make a difference!"

If the last election with a female prosecutor and VP on one side and a male felon rapist traitor on the other didn't convince you that women cannot win the presidency in America, I'm not sure what will.
Cold. Hard. Truth. We just aren't there as a society yet.
If we want to win, probably gonna need to go with a person who has a dick between their legs.
- Hillary won the popular vote. While yes, America has a sexism problem, the reason the Democrats keep losing when they run women, is that they pick shitty candidates who happen to be women. Maybe they should try running a good candidate who is a woman.

They will.
They're stupid people.

They already could have had a progressive candidate in 2016. They chose otherwise.
- the progessive dint vote for bernie twice. thats on them, and i always see them blaming the other dems.
  
  The DNC didn’t want a progressive or “grassroots“ candidate. No matter how many people voted for Bernie in the primaries. The DNC was set on Clinton and Biden.

Personally, I would be ok with J.B. Pritzker. Don't love that he's a billionaire. On the other hand, he's the best governor Illinois has had in ages and seems to be trying to do right by his constituents.
- Democrats are going to push even harder to appeal to Republicans in 2028 by nominating David Duke.
- I would not be happy about Pritzker as the dem nominee...
  ...Because then he wouldn't be my governor anymore :(
  Pritzker's the man. It pains me to praise a billionaire but he's been an AWESOME governor. Wish we could get a Pritzker-type for Chicago mayor instead of these chucklefucks we keep electing.
- How can you say that when Rod Blagojevich is there… with his hand out… asking for a bribe?

It'll be Shapiro or Blinken. Its still all about the $$ at the DNC. Nothing else matters.
- Or Newsome
  
  They probably like Newsom even more after he sat down and platformed Bannon and Kirk, as if giving a voice to open and unashamed Nazis isn't disqualifying.
  
  I really hope not. He's as corpo as corpo gets.
- Yeah I agree. It’s really two flavors of the billionaire supporters and no real second party.

Of course they will. Liberalism is a center-right ideology, they're closer to fascists than leftists.
- It's just a way to get minorities to vote for you.
  
  Their good old performative "Fight for Equality" which very pointedly ignores Wealth Inequality and Wealth Discrimination which curiously, are not only the biggest of them all by a huge margin, but are even the mechanisms that multiply many-fold the negative consequences (and hence the hurt) from other kinds of inequality and discrimination, AND stop the descendants of the victims of past discrimination from pulling themselves out from the hole past discrimination threw their ancestors into (in simple terms: if you were thrown into poverty by discrimination, the poverty keeps the hurt going even after the discriminatory actions have stopped and will make it very likely your descendants are stuck there and keep on suffering).
  They're literaly doing the very minimum (when measured by actual effects) they can for Equality whilst claiming they're "Fighting for Equality" as loud as they can, in order to claim they're "helping the disfavored" and hence are there for the many not the few.

I have no intention of voting for anyone less than a progressive. The moderates will only slow America's falling off a cliff, they have no intention on stopping or reversing course.
- What if, like in the last election, your only viable options were a moderate or a felon rapist traitor?
  Because people having your mentality is why the felon rapist traitor is our president.
  
  Biden had four years to convict Trump.

This is orchestrated. The DNC knows that these Republicans dressed as democrats can't win, because even democratic voters hate them.
- Then how do they win the primary?

Yes AOC #2, but Kamala...
Writing was on the wall here. Need to get rid of the dinosaurs to have any chance at all.

and conspire to defeat whatever progressive is winning, even though they’ll be the only one that can defeat trump’s third term

Of course they will. Either pick them or they'll send it all to hell. Even now they probably think this Trump stint will make voters desperate for their next candidate.
- Captive audience, it’s why they felt so confident cozying up to Republicans like the Cheneys, because what are the left going to do, not vote?
  It’s great really, you perpetuate a problem and constantly blame the people trying to actually bring about much needed change for the problem.
  
  many of the DInos benefit from the same donors as the gop, im betting the megadonors at least implied threatening to cut them off if they dont support trump.

My suspicion is that the DNC leadership knew Biden was going to win, forced him out and picked kamala to change the odds downwards. Didn't help that the main stream news kept harassing Biden's age and family, yet kept silent on Krasnov.
- MSM was literally railing biden 24/7 last year, and promoting trump, it wasnt even by accident as most of the networks were own by trump supporters.
- There is no universe in the infinite multiverse where Biden won 2024. It took a global pandemic for that racist, senile, far right cunt to win 2020.
  
  For real. After the Trump/Biden debate the entire world could see that Biden was too far gone to be President.

Be LOUD. Get in touch. Make it unambiguously clear that we need to pivot radically left.

There's always working for a campaign to help them win.
So who's the progressive darling?
. . .
Anyone?
- Cornel West.
  But realistically the dems/libs are enemies of anybody who's actually "progressive". They're still attacking people who voted for progress in 2024.
- Probably AOC she's young and actually seems to have some amount of moral character. She announces she's trying to get elected and I'll start getting every person I can on board to help her campaign.
- They don't do that. They're just performative.
  Asking them to do anything more than leave a snarky comment or meme about how both sides are the same is too big of an ask.

No offense, but AOC is an awful choice as well. She has no chance to win, and I really hope she is not pushed to try.
- That's the crucial difference between Democrats and Republicans. Republicans pick a candidate they love and they think will represent them. They fire up their base, and that momentum carries them all the way through to election day.
  Democrats are too clever by half. They try to play strategy and select the candidate that is most electable, where "electable" simply means boring, centrist, and moderate. They end up nominating candidates that can't excite the hearts and passions of anyone. The only thing they can then run on is, "at least I'm better than the Republican." Politics is about passion. Always has been, always will be. Democrats strategize themselves right into loss after loss.
  You can bitch about it and say that we should select candidates based on purely technocratic matters, but that's not how human beings work. We're emotional irrational creatures. We want leaders that will stir passion in the soul. And those are the type of leaders people vote for. And really, you're better off voting based on character than policy statements anyway. The policy statements for a candidate are usually nothing more than a wishlist and are quickly forgotten.
- men still cant get over the fact that a woman and poc was nominated, made the mistake twice, cant overcome sexism and racism in conservative poc groups either.
  
  Yeah, i see that as I am being down voted. Despite that, I wouldn't mind her, and would be fine voting for her. I just live in an area that's all R and I've absolutely seen how much every one of them hate her. To win this they not only need the people who didn't vote to go but also turn a percentage of R voters to D and from what I see she has the least likely chance of doing that based off the years of propaganda and political memes they spread of her.

Okay this was true until the DNC leadership election, but the current leadership leans just left enough that they could go either way.
- Right, which is why Ken Martins first act was to put the most centrist, business friendly, working with the far right focussed, uber zionist rebuttal person he could find to Trumps state of the union, Slotkin. he had to prostrate himself at the AIPAC altar first thing. Turning over a new leaf at the DNC, clearly. Things are all so different now. And look at how the new DLC is embracing progressives so warmly right now.
  
  Fair enough. I didn't know about the state of the union stuff.
- Except the chair has stated he is fine with ~~bribes~~ donations from “good billionaires”, so we all know it’s going to be the status quo again with them.
  
  I mean if you believe in your own moral integrity and the work you're doing it makes perfect sense to be willing in principle to accept billionaire money. Now I'm not saying he will or won't be more of the same, but unless you're a hardline leftist (which I don't think anyone is expecting Ken Martin to be) the only correct answer to "will you accept billionaire money" is "yes".

That's pretty much a given.