‘Straight-up BS’: Democratic chair attacks Bernie Sanders’ election critique
www.theguardian.com
Sanders’ analysis that Democrats lost because they failed working-class voters scorned by party chair Jaime Harrison
    • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
      201·
      14 days ago

      That’s why I favor building a labor party and splintering the Democrats away from their shitty party. Their party is full of people who do not belong and would be more at home in a different party, if we had a system that wasn’t so unfavorable to third parties.

      The only choice is to replace the Democrats as the only other party. Let all the right-wing Democrats join the Republicans and we build a new party with everyone who is left.

      Seems… Impossibly hard to do though.

      • Grapho@lemmy.mlEspañol
        3·
        13 days ago

        there are already sizable third parties in the US, such as PSL, DSA and the Green Party. PSL in particular is always active in unions, protests and community programs, and lately they’ve shown they trust younger members to be out there and adjusting to the demands of the members.

        • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
          41·
          13 days ago

          Even if you added them all together they’d struggle to pull more than a couple percent.

          It’s an uphill struggle.

          • Grapho@lemmy.mlEspañol
            4·
            13 days ago

            Ok, then stay home or keep voting democrat, but stop pretending you want change without doing anything to bring it about. Individualism and conformism is exactly what got the US here and both parties would be very happy if y’all stayed that way.

            Politics is what happens before and after you cast the ballot. The vote itself might as well be a formality.

            • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
              2·
              13 days ago

              Get off my nuts, I want to build a labor party. I just think it’s going to be extremely fucking hard and we should recognize it. We still have to do it.

              I heard an interesting idea on the Red Menace pod that tenant organizing might be the key to building a labor movement. Unlike AFL-CIA affiliates which are poisoned with labor aristocracy, almost all tenants are universally poor workers. That’s a potentially huge source of power.

              • Grapho@lemmy.mlEspañol
                2·
                13 days ago

                I misread you, then, my sincere apologies. Seeing a lot of defeatism and it frustrates me because that didn’t help a single bit in 2016 and only made 2020 worse. I agree on your point about the AFL CIO, which is why I’m fond of PSL, they’re very principled domestically, regarding trans rights and on firmly anti-imperialist foreign policy and they’re not part of the Washington aligned labor unions. The comrades I look up to the most are engaged in unions and organizing there.

    • TheOubliette@lemmy.ml
      172·
      14 days ago

      Which speaks to a much greater problem regarding Sanders: he dropped the chance to build a movement and parallel platform and instead just became a sheepdog for Clinton, Biden, and Harris. He was a useful lightning rod for the popularity of social spending policies and getting debt off the backs of the vast majority of people, but only served as a lightning rod, not turning it into organizing or strength. Just like Obama disassembled his electoral team to use party insiders and lose the 2010 midterms, Sanders gave away his donor list for a song and left his ground game operation hanging until they fucked off and did their own things.

      This is why any turn to the Democratic party is a death knell and why we need the exact opposite approach to building the left. The heart of left strength is organizations, of people workinh to educate one another, recruit, and engage in action according to an independent political program that does not wane or falter just because one old guy capitulates to Democrats. There needs to be hundreds of people ready to replace any “important” figurehead or candidate or politician, they must be jettisonable as needed and beholden to members’ will, not donors’.

    • Asafum@feddit.nl
      9·
      14 days ago

      I wonder how many good people are out there that just won’t get into politics because they’re “children of the Internet.”

      I’m not saying I’m worth a shit, but my Internet footprint over my life would have me destroyed if I got into politics. I try to leave as little as I can truly public of myself, but back in the Myspace days and early Facebook I was very very ignorant.