Yes. The framing of this post is pure right-wing propaganda.

Democrats do not block movement left. They work under constraints that essentially require 60 Dem votes in the senate to pass milestone reforms.

The last time they had that was 2009. They had it for fewer than 100 days, and in that time they passed the ACA.

The only way to get leftist policies is to tell the Democratic Party “give me leftist policies or I stay home in November” and fucking mean it.

Or, you know, like, actively organize, fundraise and lobby like every effective political group does...

No. Voter roll meaning number of registered voters, not votes cast and counted.

... Because historically when republics fail, all of the things you are complaining about typically get worse. Less accountability, less political and economic equality, and more rule by insiders with guns.

The solution to those is more democracy, not pretending nihilism is insight.

Want the problems you call out to change for the better? Convince a few nonvoters to vote.

The filibuster as minimum for passage is a new phenomenon, not historic...

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by this, but if you're saying it ever used to be easy to end debate and force a vote in the senate, that is wrong.

I will concede that senate productivity is at a low, and obstructionism at a high point, but the current abuses of process are independent of the tradition of extended debate in the senate.

A bare majority could abolish or bypass any filibuster, but the procedure for doing so (rather than from formal rules changes) certainly is a nuclear-option route, which is why it's been used very narrowly (like for judicial nominations). In a senate that structurally makes Republicans over-represented, such that they can get 53% of the senate seats with 47% of the votes, I'd be careful about giving up the filibuster. Do you think the SAVE Act would currently be held up in the senate without the modern cloture rule?

If you want a real argument, it is not going to be that ending the filibuster is easy. Procedurally, the mechanism is straightforward, but that's not the point. The point is that anyone who can think more than 2 years into the future and imagine the other side having a future senate majority should be wary of doing so, should be willing to concede it is a nuclear option, and should argue more honestly: that they think the majority should be willing to go nuclear to do it.

I would take it as another indicator that the winning group is the one that lobbies, organizes, and applies pressure better. Israel has been at it for decades, but I've only seen skepticism of US support for it gaining ground domestically since ~2019. The pressure is on generation-bridge democrats like AOC to move the DNC on the issue, and it's because pressure is on them from constituents who are organizing, fundraising and lobbying.

I think taking it as an indicator to split the most Israel-skeptical voters into two camps, in a system that generally operates with FPTP voting, would lead to taking steps likely to worsen the situation.

Yes. That is representative democracy.

Organize with others who align with you politically (or with whom you can form a coalition), rally the voters around your cause, fundraise to support your message, convince other voters to align with you, and bolster sympathetic candidates, and then lobby to persuade other candidates who need support that there are voters who will champion them if they take a your position.

Nobody said it was easy. It's a republic, if you can keep it.

Good luck organizing, champ. Remember to stop, drop and roll once you realize you're on fire.

Weird how “only us, only together” in theory becomes “anyone who disagrees with me can and wants to 'die with this system'” in practice.

Real serious collective politics there. Stunning way to build a movement.

Yeah, you know what, you’re riiiight. What’s the point of maintaining the republic when the heat death of the universe is inevitable?

You’re certainly not just pivoting here and pretending that being able to read history/climate science somehow makes present political struggle irrelevant, while ignoring the fact that if you refuse to build power within the current system because you are busy fantasizing about your future “new system,” what you are actually doing is ceding the existing one to the right.

That would be bad faith and something a person who has read up on history could never say with a straight face.

Well, the edit did save me some work.

You chose to keep replying (including to announce you'll be off "doing something useful"), then come back just to tack on a personal insult and blame me for wasting your time. That is a pretty revealing model of the politics: grand plans for a new system, zero patience for the people you would need to build it with, and somehow even your own choices are someone else’s fault.

If everyone outside your circle is a zombie, a liberal, or too far gone to bother with, you won’t build a movement. You’ll build a clubhouse.

And a clubhouse is fine. It just is not going to replace a system you keep evading a real contest with.

But if this is how you practice politics, you clearly do not need my help wasting your own time.

Oh, a Hitler comparison. Finally! Thank you for completing my lazy leftist bingo card!

And btw, brainiac, it was Mussolini who made the trains run on time.

DNC members do not oppose “the left” as an electorate boogeyman. It opposes leftists when they act like an internal rival power center who come in shitting on Dems in office, demanding full control of the party, and acting like that should count as coalition building when it really hurts every vulnerable DNC member from the center leftward.

That does not mean the DNC is secretly closer to the GOP than to its own left flank; that claim is political anti-fanfic. Bernie lost, both times, because party insiders lined up against him and because he failed to win a broad enough coalition. I say this as someone who campaigned for him in 2016 and 2020 and have close friends who worked on his 2020 campaign in the PNW and then across the US.

And Mamdani, like AOC before him, undercut your case. They are evidence that the party establishment will adapt and move leftward, when you win inside Democratic primaries. It's called proving your electability. And as those progressive dems (and, hell, even democratic socialists) win races, build a durable voter base, and work with the party as a coalition, they'll find themselves with more internal influence.

“The DNC and GOP are basically the same" is defeatist slop. The Democratic coalition is a battlefield, and the left either gets strong enough to win on that field (either winning outright or through coalition building), or it resigns itself to irrelevance, because there is no serious alternative on the table.

https://youtu.be/b_29yvYpf4w?t=17

Cool analogy, bro.

Even in your scenario, the car is broken because you haven't been doing the proper maintenance, and you'll never afford that other car because you're currently working for a different kind of currency than what's accepted where you live.

But I do accept you'd rather do business with the scrap metal dealer and leave yourself with no mode of transportation than fix your fucking car.

You’re on, what, straw man number four now?

You’ve spent this entire exchange inventing dumber versions of my argument because the real one is too hard for you.

My point remains that in the US winner-take-all two-party system, the leftists whose whole strategy is shitting on everyone to their right are not building power. They are helping the right. That’s why the people actually winning like Rehmet, and even Mamdani, are doing coalition politics, not purity-addled self-harm.

If you still need that distorted into “you hate everyone left of Netanyahu” to reply, that’s more a confession than a response.

This is another dodge.

I did not say progressives are centrists. I said Rehmet won as a progressive Democrat, inside the party, which is evidence for improving the party from within.

It is certainly not evidence that Democrats should stop pushing back against a left that attacks basically everyone to the right of dem-socs.

Even Mamdani undercuts your point.

He’s an actual dem-soc, but even he has tried to build a broad coalition, not just declare war on everyone to his right (despite getting called a bootlicker for his approach). He got support from progressives within the party and, after proving himself electable, eventually some more mainstream Democrats endorsed him too. And I hope he stays popular and his policies work, so support for progressive policies grows from there.

But Mamdani's process highlights exactly my issue with leftists who attack everything to the right of dem-socs. Mamdani is doing politics - even going so far to have friendly meetings/calls with Trump. Too many other leftists would rather practice the type of purity politics that only shrinks their ability to influence reality, then complain that dems are the ones who need to "do something."

With friends like these...

You’re collapsing progressives and leftists and just making my policy positions up in your head because otherwise your point falls apart.

A progressive Democrat winning a red seat inside the party (as in working with and within the party like Rehmet did) is not proof that Democrats should “stop attacking the left.” It’s proof that better Democrats, even progressives in the party, can win and don't need to resort to attacking their own potential coalition partners in the rest of the party.

Also, if you have to rewrite my position as “I support genocide and hate everything that tries to upend the status quo” to answer me, you’re not rebutting me. You’re constructing a straw man.

It's something I pride myself in. You write like the box turned out to be empty.

Lol, what's left to attack? I'll leave you to your shadowboxing and delusions of persecution.