Summary
Bernie Sanders criticizes the Democratic Party for neglecting the working class, leading to their recent election losses.
He highlights issues like economic inequality, job displacement, healthcare costs, and foreign policy as key concerns for the American people.
Sanders questions whether the Democratic leadership will address these issues or remain beholden to big money interests.
If he formed a new party with young, fresh faces, I’d vote for them regardless of how that affected whatever the DNC did. I feel like there’s enough similar sentiment that he could force change in the DNC
Finally. Everybody on Lemmy has been sucking donkey dick so hard. They’re not gonna save you. Need to start looking elsewhere or force their hand. RCV will help do that.
RCV was on the ballot in 5 states and it failed.
Just gotta keep educating people about it, especially during times like this. A lot of people in power don’t want it, but some opposition is also cost related.
It’s the reality of first past the post. Third party voting is simply almost never an option. You’re mad at a natural law of the election system. Don’t hate the players, hate the game
If I hate the game, and the players are the ones with the power to change the rules of the game and choose not to, where does that leave me?
Exactly. No players, no game. We need to organize and plan.
It leaves you stuck in the system you have along with those players. You can vote third party, organize around a different election system, but don’t shit on people who see that as wasted effort at best and sabotage at worst. They’re not wrong, because it’s an all-or-nothing play. You’re shooting the moon. If you vote third party, you’d better be 100% sure they’re gonna win or you’re just wasting your vote you could have used to cancel a fascist’s vote. Don’t say “they choose not to” but realize you’re demanding they take a huge risk with small chance of success (zero chance if you don’t organize and just complain on the internet)
If the third party is actually able to represent the people better than one of the current two why can’t it be switched to it? It could start with local elections to then state level candidates, it wouldn’t be a switch out of the blue, most people wouldn’t even know it exists the first few elections (hell, just the amount of people googling if Biden had dropped out of the race on the day of elections shows how uninformed people can be) but the current state of the democratic party can’t stay, it either gets kicked out or it adapts because of competition
Because of FPTP, that means that the GOP will have the presidency for a long time because the Democrats vote would be split.
And if that is the case, you can be sure that no voting reform will happen, bringing back the two party system.
It’s the natural evolution of FPTP system.
The best case scenario would be for the Democratic party to prop up a political reform as one of their main issue, in the hope that the voters will give them the presidency, senate and house to do just that.
But the DNC would have to follow through will all of that if they get to that point, which probably won’t happen.
So yeah, it looks bleak no matter how you look at it.
Then make the Democrat party the third party lol
I want the GOP third party where they belong.
Ha, if only
Well we lost the chance this year. Man I have never been so wrong about people coming out just to stop Trump. I would have loved to see the GOP eat each other.
Doesn’t matter as long as Republicans are #1.
evidently, as this election proved, it’s not like voting on the lesser of two evils worked either. better to vote for a third party who actually stands on the side of the people.
What does that do?
But the DNC has to shut down, because then it will just be a 50/25/25 split and that won’t work either.
I really don’t think that’s true anymore. Maybe looking at decades of political party data but I think the games kinda changed with MAGA taking repubs extreme and Dem’s going center-right. There are a lot of republicans who could find a home in the democratic party since we know 2028 will see a cult leader retiring and you know the Dem’s are gonna run an old white guy out of fear. I’m hoping another party can cause a splash that election cycle but I see it going blue and hopefully the infrastructure for this third-party progressive moment can become solid in local with sites on national.
I’m no longer holding out for election change. Oregon just voted against RCV, the push-back from changing the voting system is just too much for our set-in-stone political machine we have running now. I’m definitely gonna look into the data about why that went down though, a lot of opposition from Dems and Repubs in Alaska and Maine so would be interesting to see what coalesced.
Hey that’s not fair, maybe they’ll tap Hillary to turn this around /s (I hope)
Don’t give them ideas!
There either won’t be a 2028 election or it will be a sham. They have control of the entire government. The constitution will change. The courts will be harder right. The ONLY things holding them back will be a senator or two philibustering (until it’s outlawed) and the senses of high military command.
Also since trump will have ultimate immunity in office he can simply ignore the constitution altogether without consequence. He won’t have to step down. As admitted he’ll be a dictator.
I don’t know what’s going to happen, but focusing on what you’re saying this early is only going to cause you panic when we need to be gathering our strength. We’ve seen from the MAGA movement that our democracy is fragile. The safeguards and protections that make everything "so difficult"tm to change these past decades aren’t necessarily that difficult after all.
I can see a few well established Dem’s like Bernie and AOC jumping aboard a progressive party movement disguised as a blue wave much like was overtaken on the right. We see that there is room to capture voters that didn’t turn out and from both parties, a small band CAN take over a movement if their dedicated enough.
It’s just unfortunate that it was someone on the right who first abandoned party-lined politics and showed you can tame a party while speaking to the base (again, it was only like 20% of the population). It really makes me think that Bernie should’ve handled the fiasco in Nevada and South Carolina differently during the 2016 primaries. No blame to him, and I’m not sure what lesson there is to be learned besides authoritarianism and narcissistic tendencies are a way to brute force yourself into politics. But, I would’ve loved to see Bernie politely take the gloves off and took it to the people to back him up as well like Trump did with his group (just not, you know, all murdery and dark).
Oh yeah the way they did bernie dirty destroyed enthusiasm and that echos even today. The dems showed they don’t care for a populist movement.
Im not saying give up. Just be real and listen to what trump and the right is saying. They don’t shroud their intent anymore. They say it up front. Dictator day one.
We won’t see a restoring change come from a political party. Whether the goal is pushing the current political structures left or superceding them it must come from popular mobilization.
What is strength gonna do if he literally does succeed in being a “dictator on day one” there is only one way to stop a fascist.
Organization can have more than one plan.
50/25/25, huh? So that must account for Republican/Democrat/Left of Democrat -Where do you think the Libertarians stand in all of this? Do you think the Democrats lost this election because of third parties or was it because a significant chunk of former Democrat voters chose to stay home altogether? If former Democrat voters chose to stay home, then I ask you why?
Well, it’s because democrats are dumb and didn’t show up. Either way it would have been closer than last time.
That statement calls for self reflection. Maybe it’s not the disenfranchised, refuse to go further right voters aren’t the “dumb” ones. Insanity is doing the same things over and over, expecting different results. Maybe it’s time to roll up our shirt sleeves and pant legs and get to work for something better. We deserve it and we’re worth it, maybe it’s time to develop serious worth and stand on it, ten down.
That could force a change in the DNC, but the change would be to push them further to the right. The issue is that the right-wing party won the election. They got more than 50% of the total votes. So the democrats aren’t going to see splitting their own base as a viable pathway to victory. If a left-wing faction splitters off, then the DNC will be forced to try to capture more votes on the other side instead.
If the democrats won the election then we’d be in a situation where we can talk about pushing them further left. But when they lose, that’s not really an option. (Most of these strategy problems disappear with ranked choice voting… but I doubt the current government has any interest in pushing for that kind of change!)
I don’t think a lot of people offline think so much in red/blue and left/right. A working people’s party could peel voters from both parties, and bring in new voters. Starting right away I think a lot of wins could be made in the midterms at least locally if not nationally - maybe not with majorities but pluralities.