The Democrats must become an anti-establishment party | Robert Reich
The lesson of this election is that Democrats must attack inequality – and not cede working-class voters to Trump
Kamala raised over $1 billion dollars for her campaign, most of which was from small donors.
If that doesn't tell the Dems they don't need oligarch money, nothing will.
They know that. Problem is the WANT billionaires money too ^^
Then they spent it on high per hour political consultants who paid Beyonce to perform
Except Beyonce literally didn't perform for Harris?
That's a mere pittance compared to what the wealthy actually spend on conservatives and messaging. That's 1 billion dollars every 4 years. Fox news, daily wire, OANN, and all the myriad of other propaganda outlets churn through more than that a year.
Yes, but we're not talking about conservatives.
The Democratic party has a problem, and that problem is what Democratic voters want doesn't align with what Democratic donors want. The voters want progressive policies passed, while the donors want the same neoliberalism that keeps them rich. And trying to appease one of those groups obviously alienates the other.
If any Democratic politician truly wants to help the American population, the fact that Kamala raised so much money in such a short amount of time, and the fact that many states passed progressive policies even though they voted for Trump, should tell them that they don't need to kowtow to the wealthy because the voters will support them. Unfortunately, I don't think they're going to learn that lesson.
Republicans, of course, don't have this problem because their voters and their donors all want the same thing.
It was celebrity money, you know, the same people that were telling people they were "just like them."
Really awesome point! I hope that becomes apparent to them
Narrator: It didn't.
Going further right didn't help, now we need to go as left as possible
Radical ideas like Universal healthcare, paid maternity leave, free child care, taxing the rich.
Radical ideas the rest of the 1st world had had for 50 years and successfully implemented.
We're well aware, and it's honestly getting old hearing "wElL tHe ReSt Of ThE wOrLd," yeah, the UK voted to leave the EU and ousted a party to replace them with Labour who don't want to hold another referendum on the vote.
India continues to elect the populist and nationalist Modi as their PM, because he gives them bags of rice with his name on them and tells them it's ok to hate Muslims.
Germany is flirting with fascism again, and they've got all the stuff Americans are apparently too fucking stupid to get done, right?
Dutch police just rounded up a bunch of pro-Palestinian protesters, protesting peacefully, and then started beating them for not moving fast enough.
Oh, and the majority of European countries are freaking the fuck out about immigration and the floods of immigrants trying to come into their countries. And funnily enough, your politicians speak about immigrants the same way our Republicans do.
But you're right, the people who weren't alive 50 years ago when all of this should have been done, yeah, that's our fucking fault too, right?
Like that'll ever happen.
The party is held by a group of political elites who are all about the establishment and power.
There needs to be a new party, a labor party, to represent the working class Americans.
I agree.
I voted for Harris because Dems are supposed to be the establishment. Supposed to be a return normal boring politics.
That's obviously not going to work. Now we need an actual working class, under a few million dollar a year takehome party.
It would be easier for progressives to take over the DNC and state Dems than to form an entirely new party and make it viable.
That would be ideal, but the people who are already there will never give it up.
And the problem with creating a new party is that it will divide the votes, while the conservatives are all united under the Republican party. Unless they split too. Maybe the non Trumpists can split off and form a more traditional party. But again, they're too afraid to split THEIR votes.
A reverse tea-party movement. That could work. We were laughing when the tea party started because it seemingly broke GOP unity, but they managed to shift the Overton window so far to the right that the GOP now is the tea party, and Dems are GOP lite. Reversing that trend is extremely necessary.
Correct, Biden just cozying up to Trump when he should be using emergency powers to arrest this madman who under the 14th Amendment isn't even eligible to be President was absolutely sickening to me.
Right so... "let's do the thing the fascist threatens to do because we're right and it's justified" is not the same thing as the fascist saying "we'll do it because we're right and it's justified".
Easy to justify the means when you believe in the ends... but of course every one thinks they are right and that everyone else will come to believe they are right, thusly conveniently avoiding any bad consequences.
Do you have any idea what would have happened if Biden just arrested Trump?
Do you have any idea what would have happened if Biden just arrested Trump?
If he would've done it early in his term, I suspect Trump would not have been elected president again. But instead he pushed the idea through some absurdly bureaucratic system that allowed Trump to run the clock out on everything.
Yeah, it might be just to arrest him, but America clearly doesn't give a fuck. The fact of the matter is the people picked Trump this election, if nothing else arresting him will only galvanize his followers and legitimatize their own turn to fascism. There's no good outcome in this scenario, we missed that opportunity on election night. It sucks but right now we're the kid playing with fire; obviously we need to learn the hard way. We should've learned from the last trump presidency you say? Yeah, we really, really should've.
in this reply and the others following it you seem to be completely glossing over the most salient point here, which is that TRUMP SHOULD NOT BE ELIGIBLE TO SERVE AS PRESIDENT. Taking extreme measures to prevent him from getting access to unprecedented power is not sacrificing the rule of law for our beliefs, it is defending the rule of law, in which we believe, from a madman who openly despises it!
Biden doesn't even know wtf is going on. If he does, the last thing he's doing is trying to salvage his legacy. He's got no fight in him.
He truly fucked us. Not saying Harris would've won necessarily, but having only 3 months to run a campaign against someone who's been running for 8 years is tricky. You can see why given the number of people googling if Biden dropped out...
Biden cozying up to a candidate the party portrayed as literally Hitler during the campaign will never not be funny to me
You mean depressing
I instead see them not learning a damn thing and putting up Nancy Pelosi as the Presidential candidate for 2028.
Will she achieve lichdom in time?
Acting as if she hasn't already! There's a reason that dude went after her husband with a hammer and not her. He knew better than to mess with a lich.
Or Manchin or Sinema or Liz Cheney.
In all honesty, Newsom is probably the candidate the party leadershit has already selected.
I've said this before, but I think it needs to be repeated:
The populist, anti-elitist lane on the left is wide open. I don't know that a mainstream "Democratic" party can take that lane, and I don't know if we should bother trying to drag them there. However, what I can say is that there is going to be some significant hay to make in that field.
I think Pramila Jayapal, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Delia Ramirez, Jamaal Bowman, Summer Lee, Cori Bush, Katie Porter, anyone who has been rat-fucked by Democrats should all abandon their identification with the Democratic party and become independents. And in the time that he has left, at their lead, should be Bernie Sanders, who never needed to be told about the consequences of running with milquetoast policies.
Even if they caucus with Democrats, true progressives need to show them that their votes aren't a given, and if they want them, they need to take a step towards their legislative priorities. Giving up our votes without leverage, giving in to the Washington groupthink: THIS LOSES ELECTIONS!
We shouldn't focus on redeeming the Democratic party. Let them sink. Focus on getting good quality, reliable progressive populists elected. The Democratic party is a fucking anchor and we're better off without it. Let those unwilling to let go of that Washington groupthink sink with it.
Split the non Republican vote so you leave the door wide open for them? That's the problem with first past the post...
While this strategy may feel good, it makes the minorities Republicans want to hurt the cost of doing business. Even if Democrats can't deliver on anything substantial in the short term voting for them in elections is useful.
First, it reduces the harm done to minorities. Second, it demonstrates there is a progressive voter block the democrats could shift closer to. Third, assuming we get more elections and the Democrats aren't all in jail, it creates time for a progressive, like the Democrats your argument listed, to co-opt the Democratic Party. Like what Trump did to the Republicans and Bernie tried to do to the Democrats.
Rather than trying to achieve moral victory over Democrats, let's leverage power for the people Republicans want to hurt.
They cannot and they will not. Please do not fall for them yanking the football away from you again. AOC and Bernie exist to give you hope and thereby capture your vote for a party that has no intention of ever fighting for the working class in a meaningful way. We need a real alternative but we've given away so much of our collective power (unions) that it's hard to see a hopeful path forward. Organize with your neighbors and start building trusted communities that will fight together when needed.
Do you mean to say that AOC and Bernie are unknowingly treated as pawns by the Democrat party or that they are knowingly misleading voters into thinking the party leans further left than reality?
I would assume if anything it's the former, and Democrat idealism has lost against the reality that a third labor party cannot take root while first-past-the-post is the rule of the game.
Would it matter which?
The DNC insiders clearly have no intention of letting the public have a voice in the party. Having a couple socialists around is supposed to secure the vote from the left. Neither Sanders nor AOC(nor other progressives) are leaving the party anytime soon.
It's fair to argue that splitting the party means losing to the right but the current strategy doesn't seem to be working out either.
As the other comment says, it hardly matters. Fwiw I think they are well-intentioned but if their strategy is working for anyone, it's working for the corporatist dem party.
Just like GOP refugees created the Tea Party, we need to rally around the greatest symbol of the French Revolution, and build a Guillotine Party.
Let's call it the Rule of Law Party. One law for all of us. An end to elite impunity.
I've always thought "the guillotine society" had a nice ring to it... Not party isn't bad either
I fear it's too late. Unless the party can be taken by force it won't be enough and we only have 4 years. If dems didn't snub Bernie this all probably wouldn't have happened. Our choices used to be two flavors of corporate fascism, now it's far right vs corporate. Dems are better on social issues, but it's not enough.
Dems are clearly better on economic issues as well. Not nearly good enough, but better. The problem is that they will only go so far, and they won't talk about it, out of fear of angering their wealthy patrons.
Or maybe they should just leave the Democratic party and start a new progressive party? We have less than 4 years, but that's also the most time we'll ever have.
The problem with that strategy is that our democracy uses a first-past-the-post voting system which trends towards a two-party system.
Oh, I'm all for ranked choice voting, but in order for it to have any meaning we also need a plurality of parties. They also need time to build and I'm sure these two would start a good one if allowed.
Although the likelihood of political parties having any weight at all past January is anyone's guess..
well just in time for the supreme-court-approved executions of the anti-establishment politicians. imagine not getting this after Bernie had massive support despite all the efforts of the Democratic party, and after the orange cunt winning just by paying lip service to being anti-establishment...
seriously, that's all you needed to do. not actually do anything, not help anybody. just fucking lie and pretend you give a shit about people grievances about being crushed by the system.
you couldn't even clear that bar on the fucking ground, and lost to a cunt who's known for firing people, not paying for anything, and shitting on a gold toilet. because you're physically incapable of criticizing systemic oppression.
So long as the Democratic Party leadership are reliant on corporate funding, obsessed with American power projection, smitten with Israel, pensive about worker rights and in lock-step with security and intelligence establishment, there is no hope. You will have on one hand a conservative party that shows antipathy and disdain for real liberal norms (Democratic establishment) and a rabid, evil party intent on reshaping America and the world to reflect white Christian nationalist fanaticism (Republicans.)
10 years ago I would have told you that the Dems are playing a dangerous game with their interventionism. Today they consigned 1 million children to starve, be blown to smithereens and die in order to enable the revenge of a leader who is as corrupt as Trump and far more bloodthirsty. Kamala calls Trump a "fascist" and gives Netanyahu a UN veto and 2000lb bounds to drop near hospitals. This is indiciative of a party that is morally rotten and cannot be relied upon to safeguard anyone's rights.
Unfortunately our democracy uses a first-past-the-post voting system which trends toward a two-party system. This makes the Republicans and Democrats the only game in town.
Minority Rule: First Past the Post Voting
We need to leverage power to reduce the harm done to the minority groups fascists in the Republican party want to hurt. So rather than attempting to achieve a moral victory over Democrats, people on the left should do the most useful thing they can during elections for minorities and vote for Democrats.
Unfortunately our democracy uses a first-past-the-post voting system which trends toward a two-party system
Why must one of those parties be the Democrats? I don't see no fucking Whigs around, do you?
We need to leverage power to reduce the harm done to the minority groups fascists in the Republican party want to hurt
Democrats won't reduce any harm. They'll just send out fundraising emails, like they did when Roe was overturned. During this last cycle, they threw the undocumented under the bus and Democratic candidates were parroting Republican "boys in girls' sports" hatred.
A big issue with this approach: The United States is not a law of nature; it doesn't have to exist. The system may only allow two options, but it does not guarantee that either one of those options will keep the system viable. Reduced harm is still harm, and at some point we needed to stop doing it.
Ok, and white must become black.
Al Jolsonmaxxing
It's happened before. You have to go all the way back to FDR, but it happened.
Hear fucking hear.
LA told me
"You'll be a pop star
All you have to change
Is everything you are."
Democrats are the establishment that needs to be laid out to pasture and replaced
They are the establishment. Why would they ever change? They would rather Trump win, than their easy paychecks be disrupted. You are never going to get a democrat to care about people.
It would be easier for progressives to take over the DNC and state Dems than to form an entirely new party and make it viable.
If that's the case, then it's never going to happen, because the democrats are never going to let it happen, so you're basically saying stop voting or caring about anything and just lay down and die.
There is no future for the democratic party. This election convinced me that they are never going to care about anyone but their donors, and next election I won't be voting for them. I've voted for the candidate they shoved down our throats to defeat Trump three times now, and most of the time they've fucked it up. No more "lesser evil" crap. I'm not voting for evil again, period.
Democrats don't learn lessons.
The Democrats need to drop out and let an actually serious party take over
My investments would take a major hit if that did happen. So we're not going to be doing that.
This is Lemmy. You can't be that subtle.
They have 4 years to tighten up. I'm not optimistic. The only victory they have had since Obama was a fear victory.. nobody wanted Biden they were scared of trump. That is played out.
The right did a good job of parading him around as an anti-establishment, for the common people candidate. I don't think that's true, but a lot of people do.
I hope the D party reorganizes as a populist anti-establishment party and holds a ranked choice primary with some young actually left leaning candidates who can't be bought.
To be honest, if the D party don't reform and earn my vote, I'm not giving it to them out of fear anymore. Before trump I had a "no lesser of two evils" policy for voting. And I'm going back to it. They had 4 years to plan, hold a primary, do some prosecuting of rich criminals, understand why Trump's popular and strategize to beat it, literally fucking anything. Did they?
I'm over it, they can run a fair primary with some progressive candidates and let the people decide, and then I'll vote. Tired of whatever they're doing and it looks like a lot of others are as well. Hope they figure out the obvious issue they have and fix it. Since its a two party system they're hogging the only route that the left has to success and fucking it up remarkably bad. Like I could do a better job and I'm an idiot.
While the plan you've outlined in your argument my feel good, it isn't particularly useful for shifting the Democrats to the left. Under this plan, the causalities of this and future Republican administrations will be the cost of doing business.
Consider leveraging power by voting for Democrats in elections to benefit the people who will otherwise be harmed by future Republican administrations. edit: typo
I live in a really liberal state. So my vote doesn't actually matter.
I'll consider it, and I appreciate the kind response, but to be honest I think if people keep placating them with "lesser of two evils votes" nothing will change.
Hopefully the party can draw conclusions about the 10m people who sat this one out vs 2020, and figure out why.
Edit: do you have an article or transcript for the link? I'm not a video person I prefer to read
The Democrats need to fuck off and let us speak for ourselves.
Sorry, they had their chance. Running culture wars with Nazis doesn't progress the government, it's just wasted time.
We can't spend another four years pretending lgbtq+ messages trickled in through Disney and mainstream media have any effect on society's opinions towards the left, or society at all, and in some cases, it's all the right thinks of us.
We need to go back to being the party of unions, workers, fair wages, and the planet, with social justice tagged on for the ride, rather than the main event. The common American doesn't speak trans, or minority, or fairness.
They speak $. The vote speaks for it. There is no better man to appeal to beyond the bottom line. We know humanity's depths at this point. Work with it.
Monster grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the strength to change the things I can, and the Noodle to know the difference.
RAmen
lol, why would they do that?
They’ve got 4 years of donations thanks to Trump. Democrats never learn and will always pour money into an issue instead of actually solving it.
I suggest we all get together and form a party. We can hold it somewhere well known; maybe a waterfront, or harbor. I hear Boston is a nice place. Very patriotic even. We can even have refreshments; maybe a nice tea? Who’s in?
There simply won’t be another election.
The whole point is a cow’s opinion. It doesn’t matter.
Then there's no cost to you making this promise:
I hereby swear to not lecture leftists about voting third party in 2026, because there will be no election in 2026.
It doesn't matter anymore, so it should be easy to agree with.
It's "moo".
There simply won’t be another election.
That is a possibility. The US elected fascists who now control all three branches of the federal government. However they do not have a two-thirds majority in congress or control two-thirds of the states. So it will be difficult for the fascists if they choose a purely legal route. However, since they are fascists, they might use violence to get what they want. We won't know until they try.
In the event that we still have elections and Democrats can still participate we should leverage power and vote for Democrats in those elections. This will reduce the harm done to minorities by fascists who want to kill them.
I wanted to add to your point, because people in this comment section are attempting to write off future elections unless Democrats completely meet the demands of progressives. This isn't something Democrats are likely to do. But the people who will be harmed by hypothetical future Republican administrations would prefer if Democrats were clogging up the works and knocking fascists out of power at the very least.
They will be the establishment no matter what they do lmfao. Can't claim to not be unless they choose to go the Republican route of lying their asses off
The anti-war movement in this country has been decimated, but the majority of people in this country do not want war. The national electorate has consistently voted for who they believe to be the least hawkish candidate.
Bit late init
Wasn't there a recent conspiracy theory that the establishment doesn't want Trump (hence the assassination attempts) because he's an easily manipulated loose canon who doesn't follow orders like a good shill should lol?
Point being that dems lost this election because they are inherently more pro establishment and have been for a while.
I think that there is one issue which Trump will deliver the Dems what they really want, and they won't stand in his way as he does it: liquidating Palestine entirely. In the next ten years if nothing is done by Arab nations, the UN or the US left, Israel will likely declare war on the Palestinian Authority itself, exiling or killing its leaders if they do not submit to Israeli sovereignty over the entirety of Palestine.
Counterpoint: anybody not cheering for Fox News' talking points sufficiently enthusiastically is declared "socialist" and all but suggested as target for public lynching (or in some cases actually the target of a lynch mob storming the capitol) and the masses have been drilled into going berserk at hearing the right keywords, regardless of what happens in reality.
Calling an attempt to break this information monopoly over half the nation an uphill battle is the epitome of understatement.
Honestly, Fox News is going to call anyone against them a socialist. That's just what they're going to do. There are even some Republican policies which can be construed as socialist, such as public spending on schools, even private schools.
The average voter really doesn't care about if something is socialist or not. They clearly don't care if something is fascist. They only care about the perception of how it will affect their life.
If you tell people they're not going to have to pay for healthcare ever again, or that cannabis will be legal, or that you will fix the massive wealth gap, they will vote for you. Nominal Republicans would even vote for you. The downside of using the word socialism like that, is that Fox News that has removed the meaning of socialism from their base, meaning that actual socialism will not seem like such a big deal.
Being called socialist isn't even the issue. My point is that a news monolith has spent decades radicalising half the country and at this point there are enough cultists that will mercilessly tear down anybody Fox&Co paint a target on. Until there is a solid defense against such a hate machine, no party will flourish on its merits as long as Fox-drilled stooges will only be fed a caricature of any opposition Fox designates as the enemy. Even your perfect ideal candidate would lose the election. The boogeyman Fox would paint them to be would be so repulsive and half the country would never even hear their ideas anyway, except what skewed perspective Fox would blast the viewers with 24/7.
Is this father of dropout.tv’s Sam Reich, Robert Reich?
"These bonobo monkeys must become Rhodes scholars" is a more believable headline
Isn't that what Trump is saying he is? I mean, they're both claiming to be "against the machine..."
The democratic party per se isn't the problem.
First past the post democracies always result in what we have now. The democratic party will completely disappear under proportional representation. In it's place you will see a proliferation of the power that is being grimly clasped by the corporate kleptocracy and their minions. Instead of 1% deciding how we manage our society, everyone gets a say.
The other problem is voters trying to hold on to the Democratic party because of FPTP.
Which in turn makes the Democrats comfortable enough to run bad candidates.
Which in turn makes Democrats lose the election because they did not have to run on good policy to compete with a more left party, only a more right party.
The other problem is voters are idiots. Alaska had ranked choice and threw it in the trash. Massachusetts, and I'm sure several others, passed it up because "it's too confusing".
Too confusing? Motherfucker, have you never ranked things based on preference? Have you not a second favorite color, or ice cream flavor, or child, or season? Who is your next-best-friend? What was your dream job in college, and your fallback?
They have, they were just as beholden to money interests as the Republicans...
They only need to allow equal and fair access to elections to 3rd parties in blue states. They can be blue conservatives much as they want so long as the people have options.
That is the fastest way to turn a blue state red.
Split the vote so that the minority Republican vote can win. Because there are more registered Republicans in California than in Texas.
No, the actual answer is to change the voting system to a Cardinal system, so that there are no such things as Spoiler party's or split votes.
Approval or STAR are the answer. Either would enable third parties to exist and thrive.
As a note RCV is not a Cardinal system, and still has the Spoiler Effect. People lie about it saying it's the fix for all problems, but it's actually worse than what we have (there are parts that are better, but more parts that are far worse)
Let me guess, dems should also focus on courting those Gaza genocide voters too? Should we get the trans vote in there too? That's what, like 15 votes?
Robert Reich, the same idiot who told me to vote for Kamala’s right wing platform.
Go back to doing your stupid little dances, Robert
All of these can be true simultaneously:
Get out of here with your "nuance" and "critical thinking skills"!
/s, great job, keep up the good work
