Because the DNC isn't actually on the side of the working class. They aren't like us. No matter how much they say they are, actions speak louder than words. I just don't understand why others can't see the pattern that I do. I see Democrats tanking on purpose, accepting money from influences that don't have their voters best interest, and reaping the benefits of Republican decisions that they claim they are against....
NYC isn't the country. However, that being said, a few years of him being successful would go a long way to convince the centrists that it's the way to go.
I mean, most of us here know it is...but we need to get the rest of the country onboard, and showing success is the best way to do that...
This is the current DNC chair talking about how Mamdani is the future of the party, from over a year ago.
Before Mamdani had even won his general election.
Well, first, it was a brilliant campaign. And there's a lot of lessons.
One is, he campaigned for something. And this is a critical piece. We can't just be in a perpetual state of resisting Donald Trump. Of course, we have to resist Donald Trump. There's no doubt about it for all the reasons we just talked about. But we also have to give people a sense of what we're for, what the Democratic Party is fighting for, and what we would do if they put us back in power.
And that's really critical. And I think that's one of the lessons from Mamdani's campaign, is that he focused on affordability. He focused on a message that was resonant with voters, and he campaigned for something, not against other people or against other things. He campaigned on a vision of how he was going to make New York City a better place to live.
I think that's one of the lessons. The other lessons, of course, is the tactics he used to get his message out, both a very aggressive in-person campaigning, meeting voters where they're at, and then also in those digital spaces, using very creative messaging to cut through the noise and to get to voters in an inexpensive but authentic way.
There's a lot to learn from that campaign, and I'm excited to learn more.
Like, just for shits and giggles, tell me what you believe the DNC should be doing right now. And I'll probably take the two minute to explain why that has nothing to do with the DNC as an organization.
Because the Democratic Party serves the same masters as the GOP. They exist toakensure that a large enough majority maintains faith in the system to keep the populace from revolting. They serve a secondary purpose of capturing and neutering any social movements that might create a danger to the Wall St agenda.
Note that "governing" and "policy" are not part of their purpose.
Ah but they don't actually care if we are happy. They want the illusion of working for us while making their donors happy - the people they really serve.
Democrats doing their centrist bullshit are captured by corporate lobbyists.
How Money Works explained the saturation of money in politics (here, on YouTube), and it runs effing deep.
Essentially anyone who gets elected at a federal or state level has to decide between two options. Do they:
a) Want to serve their constituency and fight for the common voter? Or...
b) Get really rich and join the ownership class (the 0.1% or higher)?
And during the 90s and Aughts it became normal in both parties to choose option b) Apparently, it's super humiliating, because the official no longer does any actual legislating. Instead, lobbyists come to them with premade bills (and promises of campaign contributions and dark money and stuff) and the lawmaker only gets the prize if the law gets passed verbatim. There is no doubt from the official that they're being played and owned, and that their constituents are going to suffer for their corruption. But then, the money is awesome, and so they get used to it.
We're actually seeing how removed some of our officials have become from the common American experience, with countless let them eat cake moments. We'll hear an official express in a soundbite that they don't understand or care about the concerns of the commoner.
And yes, we're seeing other signs of capture in the establishment Democratic party. News came out not long ago (here from Politico) that centrist Democrats are getting worried now that progressives and SDAs are winning elections and becoming a larger portion of the big tent. Evidently, it's a coalition party so long as the left side offers its votes but not its opinions.
I think Democratic voters are tepid about merely keeping the Republicans at bay (even though the consequences are awful when we fail) but actually get excited about voting in candidates when they have specific platforms they want to do while in office. Taking a page from Ross Perot in 1988, a lot of people got excited because he had a very specific plan. I think voters would like to see detailed plans rather than ambiguous objectives.
In the poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, an albatross follows a ship setting out to sea, which is considered a sign of good luck. However, the titular mariner shoots the albatross with a crossbow, an act that will curse the ship and cause it to suffer terrible mishaps.
Unable to speak due to lack of water, the ship's crew let the mariner know through their glances that they blame him for their plight and they tie the bird around his neck as a sign of his guilt. From this arose the image of an albatross around the neck as metaphor for a burden that is difficult to escape.
And getting stuff done implies in some part that it could have been done before. So why had it not?
He's the politician that didn't get the memo to try and look like you're doing something, but don't actually do it. As if we'll run out of problems to solve and campaign on. Maybe it's that simple - having to shift to new messages is hard vs. sticking with the old ones.
The entrenched establishment that still controls the DNC isn't interested in winning elections if it means offending AIPAC or their mega rich and corporate donors. They can't offer any meaningful change for the working class without risking their own paychecks, so they don't have any moves except "not Trump."
Excellent point. If the DNC was captured by AIPAC, then they wouldn't have primaries, and would instead figure out some way to nominate a pro-Israel candidate undemocratically.
The entrenched establishment that still controls the [Democratic National Committee] [is not] interested in winning elections if it means offending [American Israel Public Affairs Committee] or their mega rich and corporate donors. They [can not] offer any meaningful change for the working class without risking their own paychecks, so they [do not] have any moves except “not Trump.”
The problem is that most people know these organizations by their abbreviations rather than the whole title
Progressives showed up to the primary for New York mayor and the DNC responded with Islamophobia, an anti-socialist manifesto, and threats of splitting the party.
Hopefully a lot more to go. We even got a progressive who won the Democratic primary for Senate in Kentucky, Charles Booker. Though he hasn't called himself a socialist, he's running on the same social democratic platform as the DSA-aligned socialists have been.
We showed up for Bernie in droves that the DNC got so scared they conspired AGAINST him to prevent any chance of him being the nominee. I'm done with neo-liberals, they're as much contemptible as reactionaries, more so because they pretend to be on our side.
A lot of people seem to think that Democrat means left, it doesn't. It means they are left of MAGA at this point. There is a whole lot of right left of MAGA. Why people assume that every Democrat is going to want the same thing is the crazy part to me.
A good example is Charlie Christ. He was a Republican. Won Florida governor as a Republican. Come 2022 Florida voters were so far right voting for Desantis Charlie Christ ran as a Democrat.
It isn't because Christ was suddenly further left.
Had he won he wouldn't have suddenly supported views like left leaning people... He would have been a conservative capitalist like he's always been.
Yes, well, let’s all remember one little thing that is separate from whatever legislative and social wins he’s getting:
The guy is good. Good at communicating, good at promotion, good at finding common ground. He’s not Che Guevara, he’s an upgraded Obama.
He’s never going to be left enough for .ml, you can see right here they can’t wait to shit on him. What he’s teaching the Democrats is they’re old and busted. A party designed for television and radio.
Plus, do you know how hard it is to be that kind of good at politics? It’s freakin rare. Sure if he could teach all the Dems how to be charming, persistent, kind, and knowledgable why won’t they listen? They’d love to listen but Joe Schmo in Topeka is basically an introvert who just wants to make his community happy.
Has anyone here, on Lemmy, tried to run for office? If so, you probably found it’s basically a lifestyle that takes over everything; work, family, hobbies, health. Pointing to Mamdani and saying “Joe why can’t you be like that” isn’t a matter of just political positions. You’ve got to sell. Sell sell sell.
And I hate selling. And salespeople (no offense). It’s . . . a problem for Dems. Republicans don’t have that problem. Any grifter or sleazeball can step right into a race in their sleep.
I've run for office, and yeah, the running is a job all on its own. That and everything takes money.
Campaign signs don't print themselves, canvassers need to be paid, handbills need printers, venues need to be booked, offices need to be rented and all of it, all of it takes money that the majority of candidates simply don't have on their own.
Once you experience that you realize why a lot of politicians become corrupt, or at least corrupted by the system.
That and his lesser touted positions are NOT popular outside deep blue NYC.
I love the guy but he isn't winning the Midwest with ALL his positions and it's stupid and basic to think that. No one in Wichita wants government run grocery stores for instance.
They certainly can take pointers from him but there's a full cemetery of progressive candidates who have crashed and burnt outside deep blue areas.
He's exactly what NYC wants and needs. He wouldn't be for every single place across the country.
Isn't the midwest just saturated MAGA, white Christian nationalist and plain ol' white supremacist? People who vote for centrists but not progressives have long since devoted their lives to the Trump god-king. They don't care about anyone other than themselves, and may turn around because they're personally hurt by the economy. But in that case, they're voting against the incumbent, and don't care who the opposition is, even if it's a proverbial sack of potatoes.
At this point Trump is personally responsible for everyone losing money. At least everyone but the handful of guys getting pardons and government contracts out of him.
Harris lost by playing to the center, and an awful lot of polls are telling us that progressive platform ideas are popular.
Think about the reddest, most homophobic, bigoted, capitalist, Fox News brained person you can think of who thinks Black people are animals and Hispanic people are all drug smuggling cartel members and "illegals" "deserve" the camps. Now double the bigotry and then imagine a whole town full of that, and, like, one single scared gay kid. That's not every town, but it's a frighteningly large number, because America is a massive place and unfortunately with a continent this big you'll end up with clusters where the outlier becomes the norm.
This was probably almoat 20 years ago, in a small rural (like 5k people) Illinois town I used to love in. We were outside doing some yardwork, and this guy comes door to door selling some kind of cleaner.
Black guy. Which I mention because its relevant.
We chat for a bit, he demos the cleaner, at one point his friend calls so he takes the call.
The friend, also clearly a black guy, is basically saying he is done and ready to leave and basically half the houses threaten to shoot him and keep calling him n***er.
This is rural America, in general. This is MAGA.
Anyway, we bought some cleaner, it seemed to work on the outside mold spots on the house.
Except we basically already have that. Rural areas are littered with food pantries because rural people tend to be poor as fuck. Maybe they are run by voulonteers now, but why not cut out the hassle and add in some guaranteed funding and efficiency?
Being a champion of establishment is the biggest self own in those states, both deep red and blue states.
Nobody want a status quo, when the status quo means everything is getting worse around them. Between status quo or a hail Mary, they choose a hail Mary as it's better than consistently downgrading
Love Mamdani, but we can't pretend the things he campaigned on and is accomplishing in NYC would work everywhere, especially battleground states. Not saying the move is to pivot to the center/right, but we have to be realistic...
Nah. DNC leadership has been in Fear and Crisis mode for years. American politics is a horrible machine that eats goals and wishes and produces misery for the people. Trying to enact positive change is soul-crushingly hard in that environment, but grifting and ponzi schemes play on the fear and frustration of the people for some ephemeral succor who don't realize that toxicity is making them the ephemeral suckers; so those ponzi schemes are very good for the ciminals who run them, and very bad as usual for the victims.
Mayor Mamdani is upsetting that downward status quo with some rare performance art of improvement, and there's the small chance he could accidentally force the DNC to actually act on goals that it once held dear and promoted in its actions, when it had the power to do so. If the US survives the grifter convention that is the current kleptocratic administration with any of its tenets intact, and if the DNC remembers how to serve the wishes of the people in action as it does in talking points the public itself has begun to ignore in its own spiral of fear and worry, that's the best chance I think the US has.
I don't see a massive reformation of the political system, an upgrade to the voting system that allows for multiple parties, or a regime change in all three branches as being achievable nor helpful, unfortunately. I like to be optimistic, but one doesn't turn a seniors bus around in the taco bell drive-through lane.
Yeah, well said. I agree with you this, back then the Democrats had stood for something, in the 1940s, they created the new deal, and government programs and policies that benefited the average Joe and the American people
Watch how real progressive candidates and actual normal human beings will get torn apart by the political machine. There is a huge industry in keeping the status quo and lots of money to be made ensuring progressive candidates don't get momentum. They weren't able to stop Mamdani, but billionaires can stamp out a lot of fires with hundreds of millions of dollars flowing into "centrist" politics.
It's not "centrist". Mamdani is centrist. They're prioritising the interests of the owner class over those of the common people because they're in pockets of the oligarchy. Which also why they'd rather hand their country to the fascists than question the status quo.
most of them wouldnt be electable if they were republicans anyways, thats why they have to be wolf in sheeps clothing. and AIPAC, the donors dont want someone too on the left.
As an outsider i think if the democratic party was functional Trump would never have gotten into the white house. Not blaming them (who am I to blame them anyway), but if one of the two parties in a two-party system was much more functional than the the other, it could quite easily convince a majority to not vote for the lunatic that is the other option. Feel free to downvote me, but the US imo has 2 shipwrecks 'leading' the country.
Right now we're dealing with:
~ the war against Iran escalating ( Two blocked straits, ah...ah...ah...);
~the affordability crisis and oil-crisis level inflation. Half the country is going into debt affording rent food and fuel;
~ the corruption and self-dealing in Washington is out in the open
~ people can't survive in their own homes thanks to data centers
~ ICE is killing people and abducting them by the thousands, and ignoring due process
~ Private prisons are torturing people by the tens of thousands, including kids and pregnant mothers
I'm sure I'm missing some, but for the moment all this isn't enough to stop at least half the US from wanting to own the libs and keep trans folk out of women's sports. We haven't suffered enough to hand the Democrats the Senate yet, which means Social Security is going to die, and the Trump administration will be able to push through SCOTUS justices.
This might be because MAGA has a technological advantage. FOX News has gotten really good at propaganda, so its (massive) viewership is continuously stoked with rage and fear, is pumped with MAGA ideology and is encouraged to stop watching all other media. The right-wing propaganda machine makes sure that every white male has to vote red to reaffirm their masculinity.
And then the ultra-wealthy are vastly richer than any other point in history. After they bleed the US to collapse, they will have the capacity go on to do the same with the rest of the industrialized world. The EU has already been weakened by decades of neoliberal policymaking and now has strong far-right factions. And those same billionaires are consumed by greed, vindictiveness and disgust with the entire working class.
So yeah, we're going to have to get really lucky for the US not to collapse. The German Reich ran out of credit and was driven to get expansionist and annex other lands. The US is already lusting over Canada and Greenland, so it shouldn't be surprising if the devaluation of the petrodollar leads to US military adventurism. And then our fighting force and oil reserves are already depleted.
So... Chinese bombers blotting out the sun over Washington.
Well, sort of. It's a giant ball of stupid to think what works in NYC will automatically work in any of the flyover states. If you come to the South and tell people you'll make their lives better, they'll hate you for it on principle. I do not think running a socialist ticket in Tennessee or Texas or even Iowa and Utah is going to work. We might find that a one-size-fits-all approach doesn't work, which is why the Republicans haven't been doing that in the decades they've been dominating and stealing.
That's true, but it's also slightly too specific. The point is that the right social programs matter. Create them and you can get votes, if you do it right... Or, do whatever Hillary was trying to do, and get nothing.
I suppose I am something of a centrist democrat. However I take that moniker in place of the aggressive Overton Window shifts that have occurred over the last decade. I do not find the Hyper Modernist shift acceptable as they are far more libertarian than they understand. I am more comfortable with Socialist policy, leadership, and approach. I like collectivist communal lifestyles but anything that divulges to communism has become a wearying conversation.
I hope people are reading the DSA manifesto because the principles in it are not American and Democrats are delusional if they think a majority of Americans will vote for this. The downsides of capitalism have been apparent for some time but this isn't the solution.
That particular pathway exists in some parts of the USA, such as NYC, but certainly does not work for many other parts. That said, I'd say nearly all voters are sick of status quo corporatism and "controlled opposition".
The American left has a big problem with purity testing, and it's going to come for Mamdani soon. He's still in the honeymoon phase, it's been only 7 or so months since he took office. Give it another year or two, and this guy is going to be ripped to shreds by all the people praising him now. They'll hate him just like how all the left hate Obama now even though they loved him when he was still new.
Then your intuition is just wrong. People seem to forget that Obama ran a very successful campaign in 2008 on being anti-war and making economic reforms. For the first 2-3 years he was everybody's darling, but then as time went on, he started having more and more establishment based positions and people started turning on him even though he still had a decent amount of good policies in his second term.
Mamdani is brand new to politics. This is his first public office and he's only held it for 7 months. Even though it's NYC, he's still only a mayor and he has no control over foreign policy. Regardless, the point I was making is that as time goes on, he's going to be like Obama in the sense that he'll become the new establishment and he's bound to have positions at some point that will contradict the mainstream progressive left and have the same people glazing him now turn on him and hate him like he's the anti-christ, even if a good amount of his policies remain progressive.
That's the way it's been for the left in this country. If you still think Obama is bad comparison for whatever reason, you can swap him out with AOC, and the point will still stand.
The current career path of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez shows there's another way. At worst, she had to knuckle under to Nancy Pelosi regarding a bill about Israel and change a no vote to present, but still seems to be walking the path.
At this point it looks like she's working to become presidential material. She's old enough to run for president now.
That is a different subject, but Harris is a woman and black which was an even harder sell.
Harris got about half the votes in 2024. It wasn't a MAGA mandate as Trump insists.
And her campaign missteps were Israel and courting the right while people were still hurting from the economy. She also was at a disadvantage due to Biden's resignation from the race and the lack of a primary.
The voters who don't like women and non-whites are already Trump loyalists, and will stay that way even as their kids starve.
From what I see here, it's folly to run a centrist neoliberal Democrat. Those who care about platform want something bold, progressive and public-serving. Those who don't care about platform vote Republican.
In a place where Harris posted lots of +80, +90 precincts (I think the closest on the actual island is +35 or so) and would've won in a landslide yes, we've found a way to barely win an election and keep us happy in our echo chambers.
Second, neoliberalism demonstrably has already failed to work in middle America, yet the Democratic Party is too fucking cowardly and corrupt to even be willing to try the alternative.
Counterpoint: Americans are so fed up with neoliberalism and late-stage capitalism (whether they think of it in those terms or not) that they were willing to vote for Donald Trump, of all people! They are clearly desperate for something, anything different, which means even a scary boogeyman "socialist" has an infinitely better chance than an economic-status-quo Democrat.
Read about the tickets on which they ran. Blomberg ran on a ticket not dissimilar to Mandami, Giuliani was elected during a massive rise in crime (and watched it plummet) and Eric Adams won as a democrat.
You could also look at the city precinct votes in the election, huge swathes were Kamala +80 which is absurd. On the island itself, I can't find a district lower than Kamala at +35.
So yes, we've found the winning ticket in a place that would've elected Kamala by a landslide, why on Earth would we think that is an example for the country.
Mainly because he's doing something markedly different than the politics that lost the 2024 election for Harris. He's showed that politics isn't the simplistic, one-dimensional left-right spectrum that Democrats seem to cling to. Specifically, he's promised a government that works for people, and delivered. It's not hard to see why people will actually come out and vote for that over the "we can't do anything, but chip in some more" messaging.
To be fair, that was FDR's plan with the New Deal. During the Great Depression, despite all the red-scare propaganda that project over there in the east was starting to look really interesting to all the folks on the ground. Hoover had spent his presidency listening to his industrialist buddies telling him everything is fine.
The whole point of the New Deal was to introduce a whole bunch of socialism, a bunch of government projects that needed jobs, and a bunch of safety nets to keep people from starving dying of malnutrition eating flour paste. It was to stop a revolution and a rise into a communist state, because a lot of folk were very aware how capitalism wasn't doing it for them. FDR didn't want to create a state of actual equality and inclusion, but preserve the social contract a bit longer.
Hoover's industrialist buddies didn't take this lying down. Since then they've been upping their propaganda game, and then James W. Fifield Jr. provided a new version of Christianity that minimized all the enrich the poor, feed the hungry, heal the sick stuff that became the foundation of modern fundamentalism and white Christian nationalism.
We have old industrialists, new tech guys, but an awful lot of billionaires that made their ill gotten gains via MLMs, megachurches, government contracts, and big box markets using their capital advantage to price out competition (Amazon and Walmart. What they did is illegal, but no one is enforcing antitrust law.) So the nouveau riche of the 21st century produced less and cheated more to get to the top, and surpassed the old rich by orders of magnitude. And they have no conscience or morals to speak of.
Curiously, this is exactly what Marx said would happen in Das Kapital.
He said he’d do X. People voted him to do X. He’s doing X.
What is your actual problem with the guy? “He might do Y”, where Y is what you would be getting with any other candidate anyway, seems like a weird thing to worry about.
This is the dumbest shit I've read all week. The bourgeoisie already had their game locked down. That's why they wanted Cuomo and after Mamdani beat him once the bourgeoisie still backed Cuomo in hopes of the second time going differently.
The bourgeoisie didn't need Mamdani to get what they want. Of they wanted to use Mamdani as an example that left populist policies don't work then Mamdani shouldn't be winning this much. If Mamdani does X and then in the future becomes Y then nobody is going to think socialism is a failure, they're going to view Mamdani as a traitor the same way they view Fetterman as a traitor.
You have to sniff some heavy duty conspiracy glue to believe Mamdani is some kind of a capitalist plant. It's far more likely you've been radicalized to a point where anything less than a full blown revolution is not a step in the right direction. That's not healthy.
also, ok, what happened to sinema, what's gonna happen to fetterman, etc. even in your made up hypothetical there's a very easy solution that everyone here except you can see because it is real and it happened
it isn't in state and revolution but it is in observable reality
146 replies
Because the DNC isn't actually on the side of the working class. They aren't like us. No matter how much they say they are, actions speak louder than words. I just don't understand why others can't see the pattern that I do. I see Democrats tanking on purpose, accepting money from influences that don't have their voters best interest, and reaping the benefits of Republican decisions that they claim they are against....
It's the billionaires that are pulling them to the right... The money... The greed... The power
NYC isn't the country. However, that being said, a few years of him being successful would go a long way to convince the centrists that it's the way to go.
I mean, most of us here know it is...but we need to get the rest of the country onboard, and showing success is the best way to do that...
C'mon guys...
This is the current DNC chair talking about how Mamdani is the future of the party, from over a year ago.
Before Mamdani had even won his general election.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/dnc-chair-on-the-path-to-winning-back-voters-and-lessons-democrats-can-learn-from-mamdani
It's over a year since the person with total and complete control over not just the party but the billions the neoliberals had hoarded...
And there's still ignorant ass memes about how "the party" hates Mamdani.
Oh, is that what they've been doing? Could have fooled me.
I don't think you understand what the DNC is...
Like, just for shits and giggles, tell me what you believe the DNC should be doing right now. And I'll probably take the two minute to explain why that has nothing to do with the DNC as an organization.
The dems "win" for their masters by losing.
Because the Democratic Party serves the same masters as the GOP. They exist toakensure that a large enough majority maintains faith in the system to keep the populace from revolting. They serve a secondary purpose of capturing and neutering any social movements that might create a danger to the Wall St agenda.
Note that "governing" and "policy" are not part of their purpose.
Masters = voters?
Because the centrists care about money, that's why they aren't doing the obvious.
Ah but they don't actually care if we are happy. They want the illusion of working for us while making their donors happy - the people they really serve.
Democrats doing their centrist bullshit are captured by corporate lobbyists.
How Money Works explained the saturation of money in politics (here, on YouTube), and it runs effing deep.
Essentially anyone who gets elected at a federal or state level has to decide between two options. Do they:
a) Want to serve their constituency and fight for the common voter? Or...
b) Get really rich and join the ownership class (the 0.1% or higher)?
And during the 90s and Aughts it became normal in both parties to choose option b) Apparently, it's super humiliating, because the official no longer does any actual legislating. Instead, lobbyists come to them with premade bills (and promises of campaign contributions and dark money and stuff) and the lawmaker only gets the prize if the law gets passed verbatim. There is no doubt from the official that they're being played and owned, and that their constituents are going to suffer for their corruption. But then, the money is awesome, and so they get used to it.
We're actually seeing how removed some of our officials have become from the common American experience, with countless let them eat cake moments. We'll hear an official express in a soundbite that they don't understand or care about the concerns of the commoner.
And yes, we're seeing other signs of capture in the establishment Democratic party. News came out not long ago (here from Politico) that centrist Democrats are getting worried now that progressives and SDAs are winning elections and becoming a larger portion of the big tent. Evidently, it's a coalition party so long as the left side offers its votes but not its opinions.
I think Democratic voters are tepid about merely keeping the Republicans at bay (even though the consequences are awful when we fail) but actually get excited about voting in candidates when they have specific platforms they want to do while in office. Taking a page from Ross Perot in 1988, a lot of people got excited because he had a very specific plan. I think voters would like to see detailed plans rather than ambiguous objectives.
It’s time to kick out all the corporate centrists and vote in pragmatic progressives who hate corporations and vote in new deal democrats
If we can, yes. That AIPAC money has become an albatross is definitely encouraging.
I thought albatross were good omens
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albatross_(metaphor)
Also, it’s incredibly simple. Mamdani is getting stuff done but even attempting to get stuff done makes people happy.
And getting stuff done implies in some part that it could have been done before. So why had it not?
He's the politician that didn't get the memo to try and look like you're doing something, but don't actually do it. As if we'll run out of problems to solve and campaign on. Maybe it's that simple - having to shift to new messages is hard vs. sticking with the old ones.
Turns out Mamdani many other people like him got the memo, it’s that the corporate centrists didn’t get it and have been ignoring for a long time
Meanwhile, mainstream Dems: "We can't do that. If we tried to do things, the Republicans would be mad at us."
The corporate donors would be mad
We don’t give a shit about the corporate donors lol
Yeah even good intentions are rare
The entrenched establishment that still controls the DNC isn't interested in winning elections if it means offending AIPAC or their mega rich and corporate donors. They can't offer any meaningful change for the working class without risking their own paychecks, so they don't have any moves except "not Trump."
This is why primaries exist if I'm not mistaken.
Excellent point. If the DNC was captured by AIPAC, then they wouldn't have primaries, and would instead figure out some way to nominate a pro-Israel candidate undemocratically.
Are Americans going to pop a blood vessel in their eye if they don't use abrivations for everything?
The problem is that most people know these organizations by their abbreviations rather than the whole title
Holy shit AIPAC stands for that? No wonder about the last few years then
(yeah I'm not american, I also only knew these by their abbreviations)
They've been lobbying hard for like 30+ years afaik
They've successfully overthrown the government with bribes and blackmail, the upcoming military integration seals it.
Wait ‘til you learn that GOP stands for Republican.
Grand Old Pedophile Party
aka: Greed Over People party
Or, in reality, the progressive voters don't show up during Democratic primaries and the DNC responds to those who do.
Progressives showed up to the primary for New York mayor and the DNC responded with Islamophobia, an anti-socialist manifesto, and threats of splitting the party.
Among others: Over 30 socialists have won primaries this year, as of a month ago.
With hopefully a few more to go:
Hopefully a lot more to go. We even got a progressive who won the Democratic primary for Senate in Kentucky, Charles Booker. Though he hasn't called himself a socialist, he's running on the same social democratic platform as the DSA-aligned socialists have been.
We showed up for Bernie in droves that the DNC got so scared they conspired AGAINST him to prevent any chance of him being the nominee. I'm done with neo-liberals, they're as much contemptible as reactionaries, more so because they pretend to be on our side.
Almost like they're controlled opposition
A lot of people seem to think that Democrat means left, it doesn't. It means they are left of MAGA at this point. There is a whole lot of right left of MAGA. Why people assume that every Democrat is going to want the same thing is the crazy part to me.
A good example is Charlie Christ. He was a Republican. Won Florida governor as a Republican. Come 2022 Florida voters were so far right voting for Desantis Charlie Christ ran as a Democrat.
It isn't because Christ was suddenly further left.
Had he won he wouldn't have suddenly supported views like left leaning people... He would have been a conservative capitalist like he's always been.
Yes, well, let’s all remember one little thing that is separate from whatever legislative and social wins he’s getting:
The guy is good. Good at communicating, good at promotion, good at finding common ground. He’s not Che Guevara, he’s an upgraded Obama.
He’s never going to be left enough for .ml, you can see right here they can’t wait to shit on him. What he’s teaching the Democrats is they’re old and busted. A party designed for television and radio.
Plus, do you know how hard it is to be that kind of good at politics? It’s freakin rare. Sure if he could teach all the Dems how to be charming, persistent, kind, and knowledgable why won’t they listen? They’d love to listen but Joe Schmo in Topeka is basically an introvert who just wants to make his community happy.
Has anyone here, on Lemmy, tried to run for office? If so, you probably found it’s basically a lifestyle that takes over everything; work, family, hobbies, health. Pointing to Mamdani and saying “Joe why can’t you be like that” isn’t a matter of just political positions. You’ve got to sell. Sell sell sell.
And I hate selling. And salespeople (no offense). It’s . . . a problem for Dems. Republicans don’t have that problem. Any grifter or sleazeball can step right into a race in their sleep.
Yea, I have tried to get involved. Not even run just involved with people running. That is even a lot.
I've run for office, and yeah, the running is a job all on its own. That and everything takes money.
Campaign signs don't print themselves, canvassers need to be paid, handbills need printers, venues need to be booked, offices need to be rented and all of it, all of it takes money that the majority of candidates simply don't have on their own.
Once you experience that you realize why a lot of politicians become corrupt, or at least corrupted by the system.
Making political election campaigns illegal to even the field (and use the money for something beneficial) is worth a thought.
No, I don't know either if it's even viable. But maybe someone smarter than me can make something out of that thought.
wanna add that he's young and grew up in the same situations that he's actively working to fix
That and his lesser touted positions are NOT popular outside deep blue NYC.
I love the guy but he isn't winning the Midwest with ALL his positions and it's stupid and basic to think that. No one in Wichita wants government run grocery stores for instance.
They certainly can take pointers from him but there's a full cemetery of progressive candidates who have crashed and burnt outside deep blue areas.
He's exactly what NYC wants and needs. He wouldn't be for every single place across the country.
Isn't the midwest just saturated MAGA, white Christian nationalist and plain ol' white supremacist? People who vote for centrists but not progressives have long since devoted their lives to the Trump god-king. They don't care about anyone other than themselves, and may turn around because they're personally hurt by the economy. But in that case, they're voting against the incumbent, and don't care who the opposition is, even if it's a proverbial sack of potatoes.
At this point Trump is personally responsible for everyone losing money. At least everyone but the handful of guys getting pardons and government contracts out of him.
Harris lost by playing to the center, and an awful lot of polls are telling us that progressive platform ideas are popular.
Why wouldn't they want that? Why wouldn't anyone want that?!
Think about the reddest, most homophobic, bigoted, capitalist, Fox News brained person you can think of who thinks Black people are animals and Hispanic people are all drug smuggling cartel members and "illegals" "deserve" the camps. Now double the bigotry and then imagine a whole town full of that, and, like, one single scared gay kid. That's not every town, but it's a frighteningly large number, because America is a massive place and unfortunately with a continent this big you'll end up with clusters where the outlier becomes the norm.
Some towns need to be burned to the ground, is what I'm hearing.
I've lived in Missouri my whole life. MANY towns need to be burned to the ground out here.
This was probably almoat 20 years ago, in a small rural (like 5k people) Illinois town I used to love in. We were outside doing some yardwork, and this guy comes door to door selling some kind of cleaner.
Black guy. Which I mention because its relevant.
We chat for a bit, he demos the cleaner, at one point his friend calls so he takes the call.
The friend, also clearly a black guy, is basically saying he is done and ready to leave and basically half the houses threaten to shoot him and keep calling him n***er.
This is rural America, in general. This is MAGA.
Anyway, we bought some cleaner, it seemed to work on the outside mold spots on the house.
Cuz that's communism obviously. Generations of propaganda is a hell of a drug.
Except we basically already have that. Rural areas are littered with food pantries because rural people tend to be poor as fuck. Maybe they are run by voulonteers now, but why not cut out the hassle and add in some guaranteed funding and efficiency?
"dying of whiteness" is a fascinating book about whites voting against their own interests so those people don't get anything nice
You don't have to convince me. You have to convince them.
Look at Oklahoma- they just voted down a minimum wage increase. You think they're on board with government run grocery stores?
Also true yeah. But “leftists” on here can’t get to that.
The country is big. Big, big. Slogans only go so far.
Being a champion of establishment is the biggest self own in those states, both deep red and blue states.
Nobody want a status quo, when the status quo means everything is getting worse around them. Between status quo or a hail Mary, they choose a hail Mary as it's better than consistently downgrading
Hey did Harris win on being Biden again? She won, right?
Yeah the midwest didn’t vote for a black woman because she was too much like Biden.
If only she had done more for the proletariat!
Hey did Harris win? I'm asking you a question.
Love Mamdani, but we can't pretend the things he campaigned on and is accomplishing in NYC would work everywhere, especially battleground states. Not saying the move is to pivot to the center/right, but we have to be realistic...
FDR populism was supported by farmers. Just don't push social policies and stick with economics.
The DNC leadership is controlled opposition, its no more complex that that
Nah. DNC leadership has been in Fear and Crisis mode for years. American politics is a horrible machine that eats goals and wishes and produces misery for the people. Trying to enact positive change is soul-crushingly hard in that environment, but grifting and ponzi schemes play on the fear and frustration of the people for some ephemeral succor who don't realize that toxicity is making them the ephemeral suckers; so those ponzi schemes are very good for the ciminals who run them, and very bad as usual for the victims.
Mayor Mamdani is upsetting that downward status quo with some rare performance art of improvement, and there's the small chance he could accidentally force the DNC to actually act on goals that it once held dear and promoted in its actions, when it had the power to do so. If the US survives the grifter convention that is the current kleptocratic administration with any of its tenets intact, and if the DNC remembers how to serve the wishes of the people in action as it does in talking points the public itself has begun to ignore in its own spiral of fear and worry, that's the best chance I think the US has.
I don't see a massive reformation of the political system, an upgrade to the voting system that allows for multiple parties, or a regime change in all three branches as being achievable nor helpful, unfortunately. I like to be optimistic, but one doesn't turn a seniors bus around in the taco bell drive-through lane.
Yeah, well said. I agree with you this, back then the Democrats had stood for something, in the 1940s, they created the new deal, and government programs and policies that benefited the average Joe and the American people
DINOs doing their best to lose the game
Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory yet again!
Watch how real progressive candidates and actual normal human beings will get torn apart by the political machine. There is a huge industry in keeping the status quo and lots of money to be made ensuring progressive candidates don't get momentum. They weren't able to stop Mamdani, but billionaires can stamp out a lot of fires with hundreds of millions of dollars flowing into "centrist" politics.
It's not "centrist". Mamdani is centrist. They're prioritising the interests of the owner class over those of the common people because they're in pockets of the oligarchy. Which also why they'd rather hand their country to the fascists than question the status quo.
If Mamdani is centrist that means regular dems are quite far on the right
Yeah kinda. Establishment dems are neoliberals, an ideology popularized by Reagan.
Most certainly. In Germany the corporate Democrats would be considered far right on most issues.
Yes.
As a European, I absolutely agree
They are.
America has two parties: moderate right-wing and fascist.
I have some issues with the EU party mapping onto the PCM there...
Anarchists are not libright, for one...
Ancaps maybe... but anarchist?
To be honest, I'm not sure our conservatives are even in the bounds of that box anymore.
Yes, Dems are center-right
Regular Dems are pretty right. And I am not even one of those super hyoer communist lefties.
I'd say he's center left coz of policies like government run grocery stores.
Hey! That's offensive to centrists! The dems actions are way to far right for that label.
most of them wouldnt be electable if they were republicans anyways, thats why they have to be wolf in sheeps clothing. and AIPAC, the donors dont want someone too on the left.
If they win but give up all their values, did they really win? Democrats aren't on your side. They are just slidely less evil
A lot of people don't realize this. The neo-liberal is still a capitalist at best, less fascist at worst.
"slidely"
As an outsider i think if the democratic party was functional Trump would never have gotten into the white house. Not blaming them (who am I to blame them anyway), but if one of the two parties in a two-party system was much more functional than the the other, it could quite easily convince a majority to not vote for the lunatic that is the other option. Feel free to downvote me, but the US imo has 2 shipwrecks 'leading' the country.
Hakeem should step down as minority leader and join the fascist regime with the human moldy tangerine.
The question is, if something will break.
Right now we're dealing with:
~ the war against Iran escalating ( Two blocked straits, ah...ah...ah...);
~the affordability crisis and oil-crisis level inflation. Half the country is going into debt affording rent food and fuel;
~ the corruption and self-dealing in Washington is out in the open
~ people can't survive in their own homes thanks to data centers
~ ICE is killing people and abducting them by the thousands, and ignoring due process
~ Private prisons are torturing people by the tens of thousands, including kids and pregnant mothers
I'm sure I'm missing some, but for the moment all this isn't enough to stop at least half the US from wanting to own the libs and keep trans folk out of women's sports. We haven't suffered enough to hand the Democrats the Senate yet, which means Social Security is going to die, and the Trump administration will be able to push through SCOTUS justices.
This might be because MAGA has a technological advantage. FOX News has gotten really good at propaganda, so its (massive) viewership is continuously stoked with rage and fear, is pumped with MAGA ideology and is encouraged to stop watching all other media. The right-wing propaganda machine makes sure that every white male has to vote red to reaffirm their masculinity.
And then the ultra-wealthy are vastly richer than any other point in history. After they bleed the US to collapse, they will have the capacity go on to do the same with the rest of the industrialized world. The EU has already been weakened by decades of neoliberal policymaking and now has strong far-right factions. And those same billionaires are consumed by greed, vindictiveness and disgust with the entire working class.
So yeah, we're going to have to get really lucky for the US not to collapse. The German Reich ran out of credit and was driven to get expansionist and annex other lands. The US is already lusting over Canada and Greenland, so it shouldn't be surprising if the devaluation of the petrodollar leads to US military adventurism. And then our fighting force and oil reserves are already depleted.
So... Chinese bombers blotting out the sun over Washington.
Mandami's political positions are closer to the center than any of the Market liberal corpratists that run the Democratic party.
True, but only because the Democratic party is so far to the right.
Well, sort of. It's a giant ball of stupid to think what works in NYC will automatically work in any of the flyover states. If you come to the South and tell people you'll make their lives better, they'll hate you for it on principle. I do not think running a socialist ticket in Tennessee or Texas or even Iowa and Utah is going to work. We might find that a one-size-fits-all approach doesn't work, which is why the Republicans haven't been doing that in the decades they've been dominating and stealing.
That's true, but it's also slightly too specific. The point is that the right social programs matter. Create them and you can get votes, if you do it right... Or, do whatever Hillary was trying to do, and get nothing.
conservatives have always been on WELFARE programs, but they dont see it that way, thats the problem.
Is real.
I suppose I am something of a centrist democrat. However I take that moniker in place of the aggressive Overton Window shifts that have occurred over the last decade. I do not find the Hyper Modernist shift acceptable as they are far more libertarian than they understand. I am more comfortable with Socialist policy, leadership, and approach. I like collectivist communal lifestyles but anything that divulges to communism has become a wearying conversation.
So I feel rather centrist, almost grilling .
I hope people are reading the DSA manifesto because the principles in it are not American and Democrats are delusional if they think a majority of Americans will vote for this. The downsides of capitalism have been apparent for some time but this isn't the solution.
That particular pathway exists in some parts of the USA, such as NYC, but certainly does not work for many other parts. That said, I'd say nearly all voters are sick of status quo corporatism and "controlled opposition".
The American left has a big problem with purity testing, and it's going to come for Mamdani soon. He's still in the honeymoon phase, it's been only 7 or so months since he took office. Give it another year or two, and this guy is going to be ripped to shreds by all the people praising him now. They'll hate him just like how all the left hate Obama now even though they loved him when he was still new.
Something tells me Mamdani will order far fewer drones strikes and deportations than Obama.
It isn't a purity test to want your politicians to stop killing people with your tax dollars.
Something tells me he won't be bailing out bankers and wallstreet with taxpayer money either.
Then your intuition is just wrong. People seem to forget that Obama ran a very successful campaign in 2008 on being anti-war and making economic reforms. For the first 2-3 years he was everybody's darling, but then as time went on, he started having more and more establishment based positions and people started turning on him even though he still had a decent amount of good policies in his second term.
Mamdani is brand new to politics. This is his first public office and he's only held it for 7 months. Even though it's NYC, he's still only a mayor and he has no control over foreign policy. Regardless, the point I was making is that as time goes on, he's going to be like Obama in the sense that he'll become the new establishment and he's bound to have positions at some point that will contradict the mainstream progressive left and have the same people glazing him now turn on him and hate him like he's the anti-christ, even if a good amount of his policies remain progressive.
That's the way it's been for the left in this country. If you still think Obama is bad comparison for whatever reason, you can swap him out with AOC, and the point will still stand.
Obama ran on being anti-war and broke that promise.
Mamdani is keeping his campaign promises, thus the article we are responding to.
The problem with politicians on the left is that they actually get called out for their lies by their constituents.
The current career path of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez shows there's another way. At worst, she had to knuckle under to Nancy Pelosi regarding a bill about Israel and change a no vote to present, but still seems to be walking the path.
At this point it looks like she's working to become presidential material. She's old enough to run for president now.
America voting in a woman and a latina at the same time? That's the cope y'all need
That is a different subject, but Harris is a woman and black which was an even harder sell.
Harris got about half the votes in 2024. It wasn't a MAGA mandate as Trump insists.
And her campaign missteps were Israel and courting the right while people were still hurting from the economy. She also was at a disadvantage due to Biden's resignation from the race and the lack of a primary.
The voters who don't like women and non-whites are already Trump loyalists, and will stay that way even as their kids starve.
From what I see here, it's folly to run a centrist neoliberal Democrat. Those who care about platform want something bold, progressive and public-serving. Those who don't care about platform vote Republican.
Excuse me sir, I've hated Obama since the first drone flew. There are dozens of us!
It's funny how people say democrats should copy his performative stuff. Any other Democrat, who isn't DSA adjacent, would get memed out of office.
Get a DSA candidate elected in a purple district and you can talk. This is so dumb.
For goodness sake, just look at how NYC precincts voted in 2024
In a place where Harris posted lots of +80, +90 precincts (I think the closest on the actual island is +35 or so) and would've won in a landslide yes, we've found a way to barely win an election and keep us happy in our echo chambers.
What works in NYC against Andrew Cuomo isn’t going to work in middle America.
First of all, bullshit.
Second, neoliberalism demonstrably has already failed to work in middle America, yet the Democratic Party is too fucking cowardly and corrupt to even be willing to try the alternative.
Come on, Americans have been fed propaganda against communism and socialism for at least a hundred years now.
Counterpoint: Americans are so fed up with neoliberalism and late-stage capitalism (whether they think of it in those terms or not) that they were willing to vote for Donald Trump, of all people! They are clearly desperate for something, anything different, which means even a scary boogeyman "socialist" has an infinitely better chance than an economic-status-quo Democrat.
Call it the golden rule party and you have your first start.
Yeah, middle America hates it when things work.
Exactly. Mamdami pulled off a win in one of the more liberal cities in America.
It's like saying Ron DeSantis has given Republicane am exact pathway on how to win elections and keep voters happy.
New York is one of the more liberal cities? Three names: Rudy Giuliani, Michael Bloomberg, and Eric Adams (has been a Republican).
Meanwhile, Houston has had a Democrat in office since 1982. Chicago? Since 1931. Milwaukee's most popular mayor (Daniel Hoan) was a socialist.
Read about the tickets on which they ran. Blomberg ran on a ticket not dissimilar to Mandami, Giuliani was elected during a massive rise in crime (and watched it plummet) and Eric Adams won as a democrat.
You could also look at the city precinct votes in the election, huge swathes were Kamala +80 which is absurd. On the island itself, I can't find a district lower than Kamala at +35.
So yes, we've found the winning ticket in a place that would've elected Kamala by a landslide, why on Earth would we think that is an example for the country.
Those are pretty typical numbers for cities. That doesn't indicate that NYC is unusually liberal.
... And yet trump won the popular vote.
So why on Earth can anyone say with a straight face "Mamdani has given an exact pathway on how to win elections."
Unless they only mean municipal elections, which is not at all what OP is implying.
Mainly because he's doing something markedly different than the politics that lost the 2024 election for Harris. He's showed that politics isn't the simplistic, one-dimensional left-right spectrum that Democrats seem to cling to. Specifically, he's promised a government that works for people, and delivered. It's not hard to see why people will actually come out and vote for that over the "we can't do anything, but chip in some more" messaging.
You liking what Mamdani is doing does not mean it is a path to electoral victory.
Mamdani's margin was much smaller than Harris's, what is the evidence that he's suddenly significantly more popular than when he barely won?
Edit: rephrased from count to margin (pres election should have a higher turnout)
"keep voters happy" aka being part of the plan, mamdani is a plant to stop an actual leftist revo
To be fair, that was FDR's plan with the New Deal. During the Great Depression, despite all the red-scare propaganda that project over there in the east was starting to look really interesting to all the folks on the ground. Hoover had spent his presidency listening to his industrialist buddies telling him everything is fine.
The whole point of the New Deal was to introduce a whole bunch of socialism, a bunch of government projects that needed jobs, and a bunch of safety nets to keep people from
starvingdying of malnutrition eating flour paste. It was to stop a revolution and a rise into a communist state, because a lot of folk were very aware how capitalism wasn't doing it for them. FDR didn't want to create a state of actual equality and inclusion, but preserve the social contract a bit longer.Hoover's industrialist buddies didn't take this lying down. Since then they've been upping their propaganda game, and then James W. Fifield Jr. provided a new version of Christianity that minimized all the enrich the poor, feed the hungry, heal the sick stuff that became the foundation of modern fundamentalism and white Christian nationalism.
We have old industrialists, new tech guys, but an awful lot of billionaires that made their ill gotten gains via MLMs, megachurches, government contracts, and big box markets using their capital advantage to price out competition (Amazon and Walmart. What they did is illegal, but no one is enforcing antitrust law.) So the nouveau riche of the 21st century produced less and cheated more to get to the top, and surpassed the old rich by orders of magnitude. And they have no conscience or morals to speak of.
Curiously, this is exactly what Marx said would happen in Das Kapital.
I mean, if Mandani is a centrist plant, then I welcome our centrist good government overlords.
not good, he'll return to the center eventually to restore todays status quo. he's just wearing a mask for now
He said he’d do X. People voted him to do X. He’s doing X.
What is your actual problem with the guy? “He might do Y”, where Y is what you would be getting with any other candidate anyway, seems like a weird thing to worry about.
But but everyone else said X can't be done, and he did X, what kind of monster is he?
hes only doin x for now. the bourgeoisie are playing the long game here man, nothing short of a full communist revo will stop capitalist pigs
Do you have a rifle ready to fight that fight? Do you even live here? Or is it just fun to wish for blood in someone else's streets?
This is the dumbest shit I've read all week. The bourgeoisie already had their game locked down. That's why they wanted Cuomo and after Mamdani beat him once the bourgeoisie still backed Cuomo in hopes of the second time going differently.
The bourgeoisie didn't need Mamdani to get what they want. Of they wanted to use Mamdani as an example that left populist policies don't work then Mamdani shouldn't be winning this much. If Mamdani does X and then in the future becomes Y then nobody is going to think socialism is a failure, they're going to view Mamdani as a traitor the same way they view Fetterman as a traitor.
You have to sniff some heavy duty conspiracy glue to believe Mamdani is some kind of a capitalist plant. It's far more likely you've been radicalized to a point where anything less than a full blown revolution is not a step in the right direction. That's not healthy.
.ml
also, ok, what happened to sinema, what's gonna happen to fetterman, etc. even in your made up hypothetical there's a very easy solution that everyone here except you can see because it is real and it happened
it isn't in state and revolution but it is in observable reality
Proof?
have ya heard of cointelpro out of the cia? do you think they stopped?
COINTELPRO was an FBI operation. If you’re going to spout conspiracy theory bullshit at least get the actual facts correct.
so i mistyped, its still far from a "conspiracy"
God damnit! Listen you little punk, I’ve done way cooler shit then that wack ass FBI shit. Don’t fucking put that lame shit on me.