DNC Moves to Oust David Hogg After He Says Party Isn’t Standing Up to Trump
DNC Moves to Oust David Hogg After He Says Party Isn’t Standing Up to Trump | Truthout
The DNC cited a procedural concern, but Hogg said it is “impossible to ignore the broader context” of his criticisms.
Don’t ever ask for progressives’ vote again. We’re done voting blue no matter who.
I really like the idea of a tea party style takeover. That seems much more actionable and realistic.
No such thing.
The tea party was just billionaires covered in AstroTurf. They bought the Republican party. It's asymmetrical warfare, because the left doesn't have billionaires that profit from our policy goals.
Not to be a doomer, I do think Democrats can be pulled left (kicking and screaming) but I'm not sure how though.
Tea party was partially real. But it was basically petite bourgeois: car dealership owners and the like. This was also the main component of Jan 6th. These people aren't a huge constituency but there are a lot more of them than billionaires.
Then you get what we got last time: the fascists gain power and make things worse for the masses, the Dem politicians continue being rich and are shielded from the consequences. You only benefit the fascists and hurt yourself if you don't vote for the lesser of two evils.
I think people who are informed but specifically stay home because of Democratic policy positions or vote third party is a relatively small number of people.
It seems to me like far more people just sit out because the Dems are useless. When Harris said the economy was good, people wrote her off as out of touch.
We can argue about whether people should vote for harm reduction all day everyday (like we have been doing). But the fact remains that if Dems don't present a vision for the future that excites people to come out for them, fascists gain power.
You're correct. But if someone doesn't support the fascists and says they're not voting for harm reduction, they should be called out for it. Don't help the fascists and then complain when they win.
Why wouldn't a progressive want to vote blue though? Of the two most likely candidates, they are the least fascist.
Unless you're going the accelerationist route, it makes sense to Vote blue.
The DNC won't improve things because their goal is to maintain the status quo
With these actions they prove their goal is stagnation, not progress.
I agree, but they are less fascist than the Republicans. So why not vote for them?
Because they have proven they aren't interested in meaningfully improving things...
I want an option besides collapse and slow collapse lol
I agree. We need time to build a leftist party or to fundamentally change the Democratic party. I'm not opposed to completely rewiring the Republican party if it's a faster option.
We can get more time by voting for the least fascist option. That way we won't be sent off El Salvador while we're trying to fix things.
I think the brands are too toxic at this point.
Like 70% of people say they want more third parties that actually care about the things they do and don't like the Duopoly.
Yeah, I agree. I think first past the post has not been good. That's what forces us into this two-party system.
I would vote for a third party if it became more popular than the Democrats or the Republicans, and it was progressive/ leftist.
The problem is getting it over that hump.
The thing about voting for the “least fascist” is you’re still voting for a fascist.
The energy is better spent preparing to remove the fascists. Get a gun, get organized with your community, build up shared resources, and prepare for the shoe to drop.
But like, you should still vote while you’re doing all that
For a capitalist party? Absolutely not. You’re giving them consent to govern on your behalf, and reinforcing their legitimacy.
It grants you slower fascism rather than fast fascism.
One day of voting for Democrats seems like it could prevent a lot of bad from happening. It's a pretty good bang for your buck in terms of time spent organizing.
As far as consent and legitimacy goes, that's more of a media thing, not a voting thing.
No, that’s a reflection of the privilege you enjoy personally under Democrats. There are many, many people who have suffered and died under the fascism of Democrats as well.
Once you’re advocating for voting for a genocidal party as ‘harm reduction’, it’s very clearly just an argument of maintaining personal privilege.
Also, the harm reduction argument is made up. Once you compare their actual policies, and not what they campaign on, you’ll see the difference between the two parties is nonexistent. Which is as expected from two parties accepting money from the same oligarchs.
I agree they both are fed by the same oligarchs. And I agree that the fascism of the Democrats have killed people.
But you can't say the difference is non-existent. Was Biden or Kamala going to start shipping citizens over El Salvador? I think not and arguing that the two parties are the same is very silly.
Also thanks to first pass the post not voting for Democrats is giving more power to Republicans. Whose fascism will kill way more than the Democratic fascism.
I’m begging you to question what you’ve been led to believe are fundamental truths.
https://docs.house.gov/meetings/GO/GO00/20200109/110349/HHRG-116-GO00-20200109-SD007.pdf
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c36e41dx425o.amp
https://www.aclu.org/news/smart-justice/how-can-3-year-old-represent-himself-court
So your argument is Biden deported more people. Ok, I don't disagree with those articles. Now that it is May, I wonder what the numbers are and if they are comparable. Also, Trump isn't deporting less because he is pro immigration. He is deporting less because of skill issues on his part. If he could he would deport 5 times as many people as Biden. Again, I am not saying the Dems are saints here.
But lets say I give you that. Biden is worse on immigration. Do you have articles on Biden doing unitary executive theory? Do you have articles on Biden deporting innocent US citizens? How about articles about how Bidens head of health and human services is targeting all autistic people? Biden arresting judges? The bad stuff the Democrats do the Republican party also does and more. We are very close to losing habeas corpus in the US.
The shift to fascism has rapidly accelerated in the US since the republicans have taken office and I just don't see that same acceleration with the Dems. I am trying to understand how you could seriously compare the two parties and say they are equivalent, but I don't see it. Right now, the only thing that makes sense to me is that you are a Republican and you want people to not vote in elections because that benefits Republicans. You don't seem like that kind of person though, so, can you help me understand?
LoL. I wasn’t asking if you disagree. The math is the math. But oh how very gracious of you to give me that! And you gave away your whole game when you moved the goals posts, and hand-waved Biden’s mass deportation record as Trump having a “skill issue.”
It’s actually that the media, the party, and people like you go to sleep when a Democrat is in charge, and they get away with doing whatever the fuck they want. Y’all straight up don’t give a shit, so long as it’s a Democrat crime.
Fuck off, troll.
You need to find a local socialist group to get involved with. Hopefully that will help deprogram you of the Democrat propaganda you’ve absorbed.
If you get more involved, you’ll quickly realize that the Democrats are more active villains than you currently realize, and are the primary party we’re having to battle.
Already in the social labor party, but the restrictions of a 527 organization seem so... broken? The political party can't endorse any specifc candidates, pay for campaign expenses, etc. You'd need a PAC for that.
After all of those hurdles, the idea of a third party being viable across all states seem very far away, and with FPTP systems it is very unlikely that it would be able to do anything before people are put in camps for being LGBTQ+ or calling out fascists for what they are.
Considering the Democrats are moving even further to the right, I don’t understand your logic in thinking that continuing to vote for Democrats will solve any of those problems. As we’ve already seen, voting for Democrats isn’t even harm reduction. Biden armed a genocide, and deported 250% more people than Trump.
That didn't address any of my concerns, but okay...
Let me ask you this. How many significant "third parties" have gotten a significant number of votes in elections, in the 250 years that this country has been sovereign?
There was Roosevelt in 1912 with the progressive party that got most of his voters after splitting from republicans (supported largely by the north at the time). The [white supremacist] American Independent party in 1968 split off from the democrat party (at that time, supported largely by the south) The Independent party in 1992 split off from the republican party, and even though they got nearly a fifth of the popular vote, they didn't get any electoral votes.
Historically, a third party has only gotten significant traction by infiltrating and then splitting off from a major party. Why would we not want to fracture this broken democrat party into something useful? We have the opportunity, and I firmly believe that the youth (once they start voting and getting on their feet enough to stand in this sea of shit that we find ourselves in) will make that move to split and reform the party to be something better.
I can understand not wanting to vote for someone who endorses some of the things you oppose (and some things that you might even be okay with!), but I do not understand still withholding that vote when the other option is someone whose actions repeatedly endorse ALL the things you oppose, but orders of magnitude worse.
It really undermines your attempt at pretending to be leftist, when you just repeat the Democrat script every single bot uses.
By not fighting the fascists they allow them to run rampant. This is accelerationism.
It doesn't matter if the party doesn't change. We can keep sleepwalking into it or crash into it, the result will be the same. We must change the Democratic party to avoid disaster.
I agree, but why not disempower the fascist as much as possible while rebuilding the Democratic party?
Why should we reward democrats for taking our votes and betraying us?
That's your problem, thinking you're rewarding Democrats somehow by voting for them rather than doing damage mitigation for the country. They're rich and will be fine regardless of who you vote for - you're only making things worse for yourself by not voting for the lesser of two evils.
You say "Thats your problem" like you think the DNC can win without these people you talk down to.
They can't. But the fascists sure did thanks to their help.
How? We’ve voted blue no matter who for decades and look where it got us.
Maybe democrats should do something to earn our votes.
And if they don't, who will be the ones suffering for it? It won't be them.
Oh, okay, you win. Voting blue no matter who is obviously the path to a progressive utopia.
It's more likely to be than letting fascists win, although a lot of work would have to be done primarying the corpos and getting progressives in there. That's not even a possibility when the GOP has power.
You don’t get it. YOU’RE letting the fascists win.
Progressive policies are broadly popular. Corporate democrats are less popular than the least popular president in American history.
No, voting for not-facists isn't letting the fascists win. People voting for fascists and refusing to vote against them are. They may be doing it because the not-fascists suck, but the result is the same.
Neoliberals are neither progressive nor leftist. They are protectors of right-wing ur-fascist policy. It’s past time we accept that the DNC is owned and operated by self-serving, rich neoliberal scum and start finding actual progressive, leftist alternatives.
I don't disagree with anything there. I still don't understand why you wouldn't want to slow fascism down as much as possible. One day of voting seems like a pretty good deal for the outcome.
You can both organize and vote.
So where, pray tell, do the progressive votes go?
Primary them sure. Try and snag it back. But you won't turn your next vote red. You know that. And they know that. And I sure as fuck won't do it either. The DNC can rot. But...
You can and should blame the two party system sure. But if you don't primary and win. Well. We've seen that before again and again.
I'm a progressive that will vote blue again. Reluctantly. Emphatically so. But I will.
The posturing of principals means nothing in our political reality. And it pisses me off. But reality doesn't care about your feelings.
you wait around until next election and wait for the PR firm that republicans hired to sway you not to vote for anyone. EZPZ
Honestly, maybe it's time for progressives to take over the Republican party primary and start moving them left .
I'm down with this. Let progressives fuck up another party for a change.
I thought progressives didn't vote.
They don't. And then they go around trying to convince everyone else not to vote also.
I no longer vote for neoliberals or for folks who receive aipac money.
Period.
I won’t vote for a republican either.
If they want my vote they have to support policies that I do.
Period.
Blue no matter who is how we got here.
Blue no matter who is how we got here.
No, because Trump wouldn't have won if that were the case.
I don't think so. There's a reason the democratic party is polling worse than Trump. They're snakebit, even their own voters are disgusted with them. They've decided that their optimal strategy for winning national elections is pointing out (accurately) that the other guy is a Nazi and literally nothing else, and they're still losing, that's how fucking snakebit they are. There's nowhere left to go at this point, the plan seems to still be "ratchet right to peel off two more moderate republicans and ask people to be satisfied with just voting against the Nazis for the rest of their lives", which is a plan that has now failed 2/3 times.
Vote blue no matter who, think about that phrase for a second. That's basically saying "shut up, don't think, just do vote for any POS we put out and be happy about it". Doesn't seem like very good marketing to me. Do you think the Republicans have to tell their voters to hold their nose, suck it up, and vote no matter how much they hate the candidate? This is investing in loser energy, it's a shit strategy that's basically engineered from the ground up to lose.
They suck, no doubt about it, but fascists suck way, way more. "Vote blue no matter who" is effectively what you have to do in a two-party system, but in reality not voting red is what's important. And yes, "Vote for the guys who are less bad" is a terrible message and contributes to the fascists winning. But voting is vital (even now, if only at a more local level), and not voting for fascists is extremely important.
Voting for whoever will cause the least harm to the country is the right thing to do. "I won't vote for the lesser evil!" does not accomplish this and actually goes in the opposite direction. But people are emotional and not practical beings overall, so the guys who are better at appealing to emotions win and we all suffer for it.
Primary them sure.
Democratic primaries are kabuki. Trying to oust Hogg is just the latest demonstration.
Vote third party, it's the only way to end the Duopoly.
So where, pray tell, do the progressive votes go?
Silly wabbit. Progressives don't vote.
If democrats want our votes, it's time for them to start earning them.
The fewer MAGAs that vote the better IMO, democratic candidates shouldn't make concessions to people like you.
“Concessions to people like me”:
I’m not in dire need of any of those. But I’m not a selfish dickhead.
"if i dont get my twains then i wont stop trans ppl from losing their healthcare"
good thing you're obv too young to vote anyway
I’m advocating for basic things people need to survive (not for myself) and you’re treating it like I want a pony.
What planet do you live on?
But reality doesn't care about your feelings.
Yeah so... uh... That kinda goes both ways. I've made this argument before so I'm just gonna copy paste it, but lemme just...
Have you ever heard of gambler's ruin? It's the name of a few different results in statistics, but the one we want is this:
In statistics, gambler's ruin is the fact that a gambler playing a game with negative expected value will eventually go bankrupt, regardless of their betting system.
Now in modern US elections, does your bet have a positive or negative expected value for democracy? Is America becoming more or less of a democracy every election on average? Apply the theorem above to your answer and see what you get.
To change the inevitable result, which is fascism in the United States, you have to change the game in some way, and primarying incumbents and voting blue no matter who is what progressives are already doing.
Your metaphor is flawed. Opting out does not save you anything because voting doesn't cost you anything in the first place. If you got a free bet, why wouldn't you take it?
It's more like we're on a sinking ship and bailing water. The ship is going down if we don't patch the hole, but bailing water still buys us time so that we can make more attempts to patch the hole. Except in this metaphor, bailing is something that takes maybe an hour of your time once every two years.
Dems aren't helping the ship stay afloat. They're stopping the people from patching the hole because they're "powerless". Dems and Reps aren't the same because they're equally as bad, they're the same because they're on the same team. They're both shameless fascists.
ok but one of the shameless fascists isn't deporting innocent people to a prison in el salvador or denying women healthcare
Opting out does not save you anything because voting doesn't cost you anything in the first place.
The bet here isn't voting; it's elections. An election is an essentially random process where depending on the result things change either for the best or for the worst. If you somehow quantify how far America is from fascism (say, in terms of how many Republican terms it would take to go from the situation at hand to full-blown fascism) then you can model elections as a bet where you're forced to participate and don't get to choose your stake. Again, under this model (which should be accurate since the conditions for its application are all there) you will end up at fascism unless you change the game you're being forced to play so the odds are in your favor rather than the fascists'. I also want to point out that this isn't an analogy; it's a model. I'm simply taking a principle that exists in one field, making some simplifying assumptions and applying it in another. What I outlined here isn't a "what if" analogy; it's one step removed from a mathematical certainty.
It's more like we're on a sinking ship and bailing water. The ship is going down if we don't patch the hole, but bailing water still buys us time so that we can make more attempts to patch the hole. Except in this metaphor, bailing is something that takes maybe an hour of your time once every two years.
I have no problem with the act of voting itself. My problem is with... everything else that happens during election season. The whole idea of unity with liberals (aka Democrats) against the right is evidently a failed preposition, and the reason for that failure is specifically that the Democratic Party is invested in the game's present state and will force you (or, more accurately, already forces you) to cooperate with them to maintain the game before you're allowed to be "united" with them. To borrow your analogy, the Democrats are the ship's captain, who is helping you bail water but only on the condition that you don't patch the holes (and yes, there's more than one). You're not even supposed to point out that neither you nor him are patching the holes. Instead, you and the rest of the crew are supposed to just keep bailing and ignore the rising water level. And to be clear, the bailing isn't just one thing you do every two years; that doesn't begin to capture the opportunity cost involved. Your bailing in this analogy is voting drives, canvassing and other outreach on behalf of the Democrats; it's political donations; it's suppressing criticism of the DNC (attempts to get the captain to patch the damn hole) in the name of unity against the far-right. The actual voting is only the end of this long string of actions that sap energy, money and credibility from the people who would otherwise be out there actually patching the damn holes.
Okay analogy over, back to the real world. The DNC should've been fucking flayed alive when they tried to push a pro-genocide ex-DA on Americans, and instead all they got was progressives hushing down other progressives in the name of "unity". I'm sure you can think of all sorts of examples of this in action, but here's one to drive the point: the progressive reaction to the Uncommitted Movement. This was a large movement that had gained momentum in an attempt to push the DNC from proto-fascism and into the sanity, and what did they get from not even liberals, but progressives who should have been their most ardent supporters? "Hold your nose and vote for her." Not a nationwide solidarity to force the Democrats to back down on their most unpopular policies, not even tepid support or apathy, but active, emphatic opposition. That's not the stuff of democracy; that's a dictatorship where you roll a dice every four years to find out which boot will step on your neck until the next election.
I should note: I'm not advocating for passivity or apathy here. This shouldn't be a reason for you or anyone else to stay home and give up; it should be an impetus to organize, embrace solidarity between workers and take on the capitalists and their supporters. Act, but act according to your own conscience, not according to the DNC's agenda. This is especially important right now because the Democrats won't save you from fascism even if they wanted to, but even if democracy and the DNC both survive Trump, next time you be on the side doing the flaying and not the side practicing cannibalism on behalf of your blue donkey overlords.
This exactly. I have voted for every progressive candidate that has come up on the ballot. And yet every single time the middle of the road Democrat wins. Because that's where the DNC puts the money. And in the general I always vote for whatever Democrat has won the primary. And quite frankly I always feel sick that I voted for somebody that I wouldn't vote for if I had a better choice.
So I think I'm going to choose not to vote in the general if the progressive I vote for doesn't win. I'm tired of a democratic party that is more interested in protecting their position than actually doing their job.
And yet every single time the middle of the road Democrat wins.
It couldn't be that the middle of the road Democrat is simply popular among the majority of the voting population? Nah couldn't be. Everybody in my family loves when I rant about the benefits of communism at Thanksgiving.
That's funny.
You know what's funnier, and not in a ha ha funny way. The way I bring up progressive candidates to people and they have no idea who it is. It's not about popularity. It's about how the media, that is controlled by both parties, only seems to report on the chosen few.
I think you should still vote just to show you're an active voter that they failed to court, but vote for independents, 3rd party, write in, whatever.
Honestly, I think the only solution for progressives is to elect enough independents that mathematically, while a minority, MUST be courted by the establishment parties in order to secure their legislation. Though that won't do anything for legislation that both establishment parties fully agree on, that'll still get rammed through.
But what are we even talking about? These are all legal constructs. We're living post rule of law now. Dictator just flat ignoring courts.
Yeah, that's basically the situation in Australia. The crossbench is needed to pass anything in the Senate, but Liberals and Labour routinely join forces to pass some truly disgusting shit (most recently an election reform that would reduce funding to the smaller parties, and a takeover of one of the biggest unions in the country).
Exactly this. Stop giving the DNC money. Whenever you can send the message to the officials. No progressive platform and change? No removal of incumbents? No money. No vote.
It isn’t _just _ on us to do something. If they too don’t wanna see the fascists win, then it’s time for them to eat humble pie and realize their policies and their positions for the past 30-40 years brought this pig to prom. They have to pass the torch.
Fascism might be defeated again but it will come at the cost of neoliberalism finally dying as well. There’s very little options of anything else working.
Like another poster said casting a blank ballet sends much more of a message than not voting at all.
the message:
I think we need a different color to vote for. Definitely not green, because that party is for shit. But Democrats are functionally useless at this point.
I think I would rather throw my vote away on somebody who challenges the status quo in a progressive way under the Democratic socialist party (or just the plain socialist party) rather than vote for some goddamn Democrat who's going to uselessly wring their hands and then go home to their million dollar mansion and cry about how unfair people are being to their useless ass.
Voting blue hasn't helped cause they think it's your only option so they don't have to actually do anything to earn your vote other than being "not a Republican".
FUCK THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY
I'M NOT VOTING FOR ANOTHER MODERATE ASSHOLE
Your maga friends thank you for your service 🙏
No where they sit their ass at home so the red hats don’t come for us for voting for dems who won’t even do a fucking thing to combat this. If I’m going to go on record as being against the regime it better be for a good reason, and this ain’t it