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How do you destroy the notion that Democrats are the good guys? Americans seem like a lost cause on that regard
How do you destroy the notion that Democrats are the good guys? Americans seem like a lost cause on that regard
53 comments
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Mentioning that Democrats are just as narcissistic, evil and selfish as Rethuglicans and Lolbertarians, and describing how aside from rhetoric, all 3 of these parties have nearly the exact same political positions and viewpoints, and they all have nearly the exact same goal of plundering the entire world at the behest of white supremacist, colonialist, fascist, imperialist reich-wing anti-humane nutjobs.
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I think that a lot of people know the Democrats are shit. They have been shit for decades.
The problem is that people correctly figure out the Democrats are controlled opposition, and they don't stick around. They just stop voting.
The problem is the Democrats know this, and they'd rather lose elections, keep their nice little controlled opposition status, rather than try to actually engage with disaffected voters.
The Bernie campaign was a direct attempt to show that if someone tried to reach out to disaffected voters, it could be successful.
The Democrats made sure to sabotage that strategy by rigging the primaries.
So at this point I think the best thing to do is keep criticizing the Democrats, highlight their intentional losing strategies, and wait until enough people catch on, and we build a mass movement to replace them with something better. Hopefully we catch enough people before they give up and just check out of politics completely
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I find "Democrats are useless" is a way to get your foot in the door without directly challenging their good-guy status. Highlighting how Democrats "fail" to accomplish anything because of the actions of other Democrats or when Democrats capitulate to Republicans and help them with their agenda is good agitation.
Chuck Shuemer voting for the Republican spending bill to prevent a government shutdown is a good example. The Democratic base is absolutely furious, it's time to highlight that Democratic leadership will never act as the opposition that their base actually wants.
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I find the problem is that liberals always take the individualistic viewpoint on this, and they'll fixate on specific people like Schumer instead of recognizing that there's a structural problem within the party. In my experience, discussing the fact that there are structural problems is a bridge too far for most people.
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That's true, but the fact that he's the minority leader helps. It's still individualism, but it's possible to point out that the party leadership is bad. That's not that far removed from saying "... and that's why we need to form a labor party"
Many, sadly, will think they can just change leadership and the Party will be fixed. I think continually pointing out the contradictions and agitating with these examples still helps. We can wear them down!
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Another good aspect of the "Democrats are useless" angle is that it doesn't overstate the case. You'll often find leftists talking about "controlled opposition" and similar arguments -- whatever the merits of those, they're not going to work on someone who's just finally considering that Dems might not be worth rooting for.
People rarely radicalize all the way at once. It's a step-by-step process. Our job is to lead people step by step, not sprint ahead and then get frustrated when people don't immediately join us.
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My explanation to disprove that notion: The two-party system in the US is simply two coalitions that revolves around the different division of the American oligarchy. The reshuffling of the two coalitions from 2016 in response to the increasing saliency of the socially progressive issues over economic issues means that the Democrats no longer represent the middle ground between the working class and Capitalist class. The Democratic party now is a coalition of Capitalists who are socially liberal against the Republicans who are socially conservative.
The irony is that Trump, who is framed as the bad guy by the media oligarch, is more beneficial for the working class since he disrupt the alliance of free riding Western European diaspora, force them to confess to their hypocritical protectionist policies against Trump, and remove foreign bribery in the form of foreign aid.
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https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/16/politics/cnn-poll-democrats/index.html
People don't like Democrats, the problem is the lack of an alternative. There are only two electoral alternatives to Democrats that aren't the "even worse" option of Republicans:
- Run a candidate to the left of Democrats in a Democratic primary, and
- Create a third party.
There are major issues with both. There are even bigger issues with non-electoral political action.
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We had de la Cruz in solidly red states, Dems sued to keep her off ballots in swing states.
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I'd take a look at this overview of how political parties are allowed to operate in the U.S. For me, it settles the question of "run as a third party or run in Democratic primaries" decisively in favor of the latter.
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Part of the problem with American liberals is that they're consumate pushovers, allergic to effective tactics. You can get them to concede that the Democrats suck but convincing them to actually stand up to them in any way is a whole other matter.
My approach on here, (which generally doesn't work), is to call out "lesser evilism" as an ideology rather as just "rational truth." I'll go into the game theory example where two people have a hundred dollars to split, the first makes an offer and the other either accepts or denies, if they deny, nobody gets anything. If both players were "rational," then the first person would offer only $1 and the second would accept, because $1 is a "lesser evil" than $0. But in practice, most people reject offers below around $30, and as a result most offers are closer to that range. The "irrational" approach is more effective, because it's about establishing conditions and a credible threat.
When they inevitably ignore/reject that explanation and call me a secret Trump supporter/Russian bot/red fash, I just tell them that I am irrational and unpredictable and willing to do things out of pure spite, and if they don't want me to they'd better make sure I get what I want, or I will start executing one vote every hour on the hour. Because of they can't be persuaded to understand basic concepts of how bargaining works, then I figure I'll just deploy the tactics and teach by demonstration.
Though this gets back to the problem that even when they pretend to criticize the democrats to try to be more persuasive to the left, it's generally insincere and as soon as they're not talking to us they'll celebrate democratic politicians full-throatedly.
Like you say, it often feels like a lost cause.
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I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
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Maybe start by quitting this ridiculous us vs them rethoric. People have more to them than being democrat or republican.
Whatever political side you disagree with is not a unanimous group of "bad guys" or "good guys"
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Whatever political side you disagree with is not a unanimous group of "bad guys" or "good guys"
Tell that to the supporters of the Democrat and Republican parties. A lot of people in the US absolutely do believe that their side is the "good guys" and the other side are the "bad guys". This is not something we came up with.
The OP's question was about how to break through this notion that any of these corporate parties are the "good guys". Your "enlightened centrism" or attempt at putting yourself "above" politics (ignoring politics), or whatever it is you think you are doing with your comment is not addressing the real issue. The reality is that there is a widespread false consciousness in the US which is propped up by the false dichotomy of political partisanship. You won't solve the problem by pretending like it doesn't exist.
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53 comments