We protest with pink hats; they protest with AK47s.
Harris ran an excellent campaign, but she was running a campaign and they were fighting a war.
They are willing to go scorched earth; we are not.
They are unbound by the law; we are hobbled by it.
For them, winning is everything, even if they can’t govern. For us, governing is everything even if we can’t win. (Failing to realize that if you don’t win you can’t govern.)
Bernie is awesome, but we need someone young, someone who comes from outside politics who isn’t shackled to the “inside game.” Someone like, dare I say, you know who. And yes we need to build systems that ensure we hold power. We need our own project 2025.
OMG Harris ran a pathetic campaign! She played Hillary and was all anti-Trump and supported Joe Biden’s despicable Zionist war on Gaza. We need to get the fuck out of the DP!
Yes there's a reason they call it "the political party where social movements go to die" We are in this mess because of their weakness. I don't entirely blame Clinton, it's broader than him but he was certainly a big factor in moving the Dems away from New Deal type policies. West Wing Democrats let's call them.
No thanks. I will not affiliate w/ a “someone-like-you-know-who.” You are suggesting hypocrisy if that's your idea of turning things around. There are ways to remain honest & have integrity while combating the vile Republican machine. We can openly refuse to oppess the poor and harm innocent people, for example. We can insist on treating all people like humans who possess dignity for starters & speak up boldly for all that is Right & courageously confront & oppose all that is wrong, regardless of the consequences. But we canNOT behave like Republicans have behaved!
You would do well to sit down & shut up. Please don’t suggest that more people embrace selfishness & exploitation… & sell their soul.
But, I liken this moment to World War II. We had to do some distasteful things in that war in order to save the world. We had to understand that fighting fair was a recipe for certain defeat. We had to know that a war means you have to kill more of them than they do of you. We eventually had to use nuclear weapons. That doesn’t mean we give up the values and principles we stand for. We didn’t in WWII, but we did fight to win. That’s what I am proposing.
Yeah, I'm sorry for being so harsh. Sometimes I think I just need a break from knowing what's going on so I can refresh and not dwell on the level of "fed up." I didn't deserve your mild response to my anger. Thank you, and I'm sorry.
No worries. I feel exactly the same way, and had to apologize to someone on here just a few days ago. Thank you and I really believe good will prevail in the end.
Nick, the problem is not a clear Progressive vision. The problem is lack of building a national alternative democratic org. Bernie and AOC doing everything but this, as Corbin notes.
I’m reading it. Tom Hayden for Christ sake. Never got off the ground. So much effort. So many words. Can we REALLY stand against oligarchs? In our comfortable cocoons do we want to try?
The cocoons of the 50's were far worse, especially for white men. One had to conform w the norms which were pretty horrendous at the time and so did your family. So, to come up with SDS, that took massive balls. Throw off the comforts of stifling postwar conformity and blaze a new trail. That was the 60s in a nutshell.
I'm just a wee bit younger. You woulda found my ass getting teargassed in Miami Beach '72. In the 80s I rented Haydns old room at Jane Fonda's house in Whitley Heights. Tom did make it to Cal state Senator (Westside, of course)
Your brother's bound and gagged and they've tied him to a chair. Wont you please come to Chicago for a riot
That's what I grew up with. The kids prolly think all this now is a really bad massively multiplayer game on the net...
I just glanced at your profile. It appears we went to different schools together so I'm curious. Where did you grow up and how old were you when you knew you were hippie? Oh remember the Paul McCartney look-alike contest? 😜
"You know who?" That's not very helpful. Do you mean Luigi? He's a distraction. Sure lots of people got excited by him but as far as we know he had to connection to any sort of actual community trying to change things, any more than Ted Kazynski did. He appeals to a vague anti-elite populism that many politically disengaged people have.
What about practical solution or actions. You clearly identified the problem, but didn't propose any real world solutions except in very general terms. We've had enough of that. Time to propose actions that can make a difference. Raise money from wealthy Independents and Democrats like Buffet to make a difference.
I'm getting there. I want to lay the foundations first where we are, why the Democratic Party as it stands isn't going to deliver us. I will be getting to proposed political and economic solutions, but I want to make sure as much of the audience is on the same page as possible beforehand. I won't drag it out like Lost or Yellowjackets, so don't sweat.
I’m so glad you have some ideas toward building a solid foundation! I’m hoping you start laying out your ideas so we can begin to take actions. We the people want to break through and make a difference. Please, start the process‼️
I recognize what you are saying. Every piece of this: protest, town hall, civil disobedience, etc, are just tools. There is no nuclear weapon to fix everything… so we use what we know and then learn on the fly. Ask Ukraine whether protests can overthrow a Russian asset.
I’m ready to go and know many others who are too. We’re just waiting on our marching orders. We all want an actual plan and solid infrastructure to build this. Let us know what we can do.
The building of the right-wing political infrastructure began with the famous Powell memo of 1971 urging powerful, wealthy businessmen to invest in building such an infrastructure, e.g., investing in scholarships for right wing students, funding "research" institutions in universities, investing in communication media, etc. They had the money and the organization (Chambers of Commerce) to make it happen. I think you are absolutely right that this is what we lack but I question where is the BIG money and organizational structure to make it happen on the left? Or, how can we use mass movement politics to do so?
To the person that implied that Kamala lost because she just "ran an excellent campaign", but was up against people fighting a war, I don't mean to be rude about it, but that's completely wrong.
She didn't lose, the Republicans stole the election, but it is a travesty that she didn't win by a landslide, because even if they hadn't stolen it, she would have barely squeaked out a win, against the convicted fraudster and rapist who attacked our country, and is deep in dementia, and holds about 90% ideas that most Americans find abhorrent. Not slaughtering a fool like Trump metaphorically on the campaign trail is forever to the shame of present-day Democrats.
She ran a campaign that tried to be all things to all people, but with most of the energy going to appealing to Republicans, and very little effort to appeal to the progressive vast majority of their own voters, which is typically the boneheaded democratic mistake they never seem to learn from; it's hubris that usually brings everybody down and this is no different, but in addition to the hubris I think it's the loser instinct to want to suck up to power even when that power is opposing you.
They assume that they can appeal to Republicans and turn them into Democrats, but Bernie has done that a lot more than they have by taking the opposite strategy, actually going out and making his case for why the maggots should change their minds to embrace things like Medicare for all that would improve their lives, rather than trying to be Republican lite, which never works, but hope springs eternal for the corporate Democrats.
She did some things right which really helped, and was even six points up shortly after picking Tim Walz which was absolutely by far the best decision she ever made in her life, and she did some super obvious boneheaded mistakes that a person of below average intelligence but with progressive values simply would never make, whereas she is a highly intelligent person who made boneheaded mistakes because of her establishment corporatist perspective, which causes a lot of establishment insiders to do stupid things even though they're smart people; we all have blind spots.
The establishment has made sure that the Democratic blind spots favor oligarchs and a corporate agenda, mostly by bribing them .
After picking Tim Walz, and Tim was proving to be the awesome secret weapon and by far the obvious best asset to the Kamala campaign, which all progressives knew he would be as soon as we learned about what he did for Minnesota, the Biden professional Democratic strategists who specialize in losing, got to her, and using their perfectly honed instincts for sniffing out the very best way to lose, they incredibly made her put Tim under wraps, and made him tone down his rhetoric, telling him to stop using the viral most popular slogans any Democrat ever came up with, they snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory; sniffing out the hard-hitting rhetoric that was so successful, basically punching the bullies in the nose, in an emergency effort to avoid the threat of winning.
The Biden advisors found his obviously superior talent for campaigning way beyond the pale and told them to go back to worrying about decorum and avoiding offending Republicans at all costs including alienating Democratic voters and losing elections.
They said let us spit in Bernie's eye after he offered to be a surrogate for her; still the most popular politician in America, but they knew better than to go with somebody like that.
Their superior loser instincts said "no she should campaign with billionaires and oligarchs instead; the working class always responds positively when lectured from above by the robber barons that are killing us all, plus Trump has billionaire oligarchs so why can't we?"
The same team still sometimes like to humiliate themselves by suggesting after the election that Biden would have won, because remember they were the ones who are sticking to their guns and insisting we have to run him after he lost the power of speech, and had to be removed from the public eye during The sundowner hours, and they had to come up with excuses for why his brain was failing every minute that he was in the public eye, even before 4:30 p.m..
They had hundreds of thousands of voters desperately begging them to stop their disgusting record setting genocide in Gaza, or they wouldn't be able to bring themselves to vote for a party willing to keep bombing, torturing and raping more children to death.
Kamala's excellent establishment loser instincts told her to lie to them and say that she was working day and night for a ceasefire, even took one of our best Congress members down multiple pegs, by convincing her to lie about that on the national stage; obviously the people that felt so strongly about the genocide which I include myself among although I did vote for Kamala, weren't fooled for a nanosecond by the lies and it just pissed us off more.
Progressives were obviously wildly underestimated by the liars, and the Democratic establishment always does that. We all know she wasn't working on peace, and she even insisted on silencing the one Palestinian voice that might have been heard from the campaign; not because that person was going to criticize her; she promised to endorse Kamala from the stage and submitted her very pro-Kamala speech ahead of time.
Kamala's establishment instincts also told her that when asked to differentiate herself from the historically unpopular Biden, her best answer was she could think of nothing she would have done differently. That one comment likely cost her hundreds of thousands of votes.
All the intelligent people in the country (and the entire world) are worried about the sabre rattling the US does with Iran, and progressives know that by far Obama's best accomplishment was the Iran nuclear deal, that face painted cobweb headed Hitler 2.0 took us out of, following his instincts to attempt the destruction of all life.
So kamala's establishment instincts told her that when asked who the biggest threat to the United States is, she would say" me too", not to amplify the outrage of women who are abused by men, but to amplify the dangerous world war risking fake outrage of trump against Iran.
Israel the country that's been trying to force us to do a proxy war with Iran on their behalf, like they did with our worst foreign policy blunder, the Iraqi genocide where we slaughtered about a million of them, under powerful arm twisting by the corrupt Israel lobby, is obviously the most destabilizing country in the Middle East by a country mile, and about the most dangerous country in the world for the United States outside of Russia.
So, Democratic establishment instincts like Kamala has vis-a-vis foreign policy, are a lot more like Trump's than they are like a progressive, which isn't surprising given the bipartisan history of warmongering in this country. After all it was Hillary who whipped up the votes needed to abdicate Congressional responsibility and allow bush to decide to attack Iraq at any time without consulting them; she contributed to the murder of a million people by playing politics.
Go check out Greg Palast. We need to get the left to stop going along with the establishment lie that Trump won the election fair and square. He stole the election even if you ignore the fact that no election with 13 billionaires funding one side, can truly be called democratic. They removed 4.7 million voters targeted by race mostly black, from the voter rolls in this era of Jim Crow 2.0. that was more than enough to change the election outcome even with the billionaires throwing their monet at it.
There are no heroes here except for the people that the establishment Democrats try to suppress. Establishment Democrats and establishment Republicans are far more aligned than they let on; agreed on almost every aspect of foreign policy, unchanged for decades, and the terrible setup for giving away the power of Congress, transferring it to the president, giving that branch (no accident that it's the most removed from citizen control) the power to destroy our country, defeating what we've always touted as the brilliant system of checks and balances with co-equal branches of government.
Without a hostile takeover and complete restructuring of the democratic party to get rid of the corruption, there's no hope of the Democrats being an effective foil for the Republican war machine.
As long as both parties are taking the Supreme Court's invitation to heart, and trying to win elections by simply out spending the other side, which of course three lies on sucking up to the richest people in the world, and that requires abandoning all Democratic and progressive principles in favor of taking the path of oligarchs towards a kleptocracy; it's quite clear at this point that the fascists are only interested in the presidency in order to treat the United States like a corporation by hostile raiders; they're taking it over breaking it and selling off the parts to make themselves fabulously rich by destroying their own country.
For me the ultimate blunder was thinking that just because Liz Cheney was the lead Republican on the Jan 6 committee and a loud voice in warning America , that she would be a asset on the campaign trail and win over centrist Republicans. Really? Losing a third of the electorate including most center left Democrats was just a master stroke of how to lose this election. Every freaking Democrat knows and loathes the name Cheney and what her father did. They also remembered that she supported his policies over 90% of the time. Maybe the DNC thought they were being clever, maybe Kamala thought she was being a shrewd tactician. .for my money one of the dumbest moves ever and if that’s any indication of the intellectual and tactical prowess of the Democratic Party then sadly she and they and we, deserved to lose. It’s time for a coalition of progressive thinkers and who know how to build for the long term to take over the Party. Priority 1 . . build by whatever means necessary a 24/7 media outlet/voice to counter FOX and develop for the long term a counterpart to ALEX and the Heritage Foundation.
Greg- you are so correct- it makes me so sad though- I’ve had so many conversations with friends in line with all you’ve laid out- only to shake our heads and say- why don’t more folks figure this all out. I was thinking about how Greg Palast had all the ammo and would anyone do what the Republicans did- force a recount in even ONE swing state- never…🥺 I fear that 2026 will be meaningless- rigged- and yet there are so many voices right now saying there’s hope in 2026- which would only be a tiny part in this hideous game anyway- jeeeeezus….
Another of the right wing's efforts that has paid off over decades has been their big-money backed efforts to install conservative university presidents.
I agree with your premises, but I don't see where the resources are. I don't see where the money is. Bernie raised $250 million from small donors? Musk dropped that much on Trump in one donation when he sneezed. Now he's dropped another hundred million on his PAC for appearing in a Tesla commercial in the White House driveway.
Where are our billionaires? It was right-wing billionaires who built and continue to support the vast right-wing propaganda cabal. We all know their names. The Kochs, Mercers, Waltons, McMahons, etc. Half of them are in the current administration.
We have left-wing podcasters, radio shows and even a TV network (FreeSpeechTV), but where are the billionaires supporting this messaging? MSNBC has a couple of progressive voices on in the evening, but even they seem hobbled by stodgy, conservative management that ejects their arguably strongest progressive voices while continuing to stand behind their center-right morning show that had a huge hand in Trump's 2016 win.
How do we get people to understand that this struggle is not Democrats against Republicans, but working people against the billionaire class? We don't seem to have any billionaires stepping up. George Soros is blamed by the right for financing every bit of our grassroots efforts, but as we all know, he doesn't.
MSNBC is currently for sale. Where is our Rupert Murdoch that has the means to buy it and dump a half billion dollars in it to develop a truly progressive, unified voice to counter FOX, Newsmax, OAN and all of the other well-funded right-wing propaganda outlets? Where are the well-heeled, well-connected millionaires that have the means and the connections to pull together an investment group to build some of this infrastructure you speak of?
Anyone in the working or middle classes looking for a billionaire to save them is like a medieval peasant looking for a lord who will take a little bit less from him.
I completely agree thie movement has to be need more effective than just having rallies. It needs to be treated as a business with goal, vision, strategy and accountability. Many of the organizations, businesses exist but are not effectively aligned or everyone is working in there own bubble. I don't think it has to be as centralized as the current republican organization because frankly, we are more capable, educated, can follow order etc.
It won't happen under the current democratic leadership or with the current democratic structure as it is based solely in volunteers commitment which while important, does not have the skills to create this. It may be better to have it in cooperation with the party.
You need a broader coalition. The business community has to be brought in. The problem with many progressive messages is it is them vs us. We need a new economic message that attracts workers and business. There are many businesses, especially high tech businesses that want strong work force development and believe that treating employees well makes for good business. The progressives message is often the people, against growth and profits. That is a very limited look at the economy. Right now if the republicans are changing the script, why are the democrates/progressives not creating new policies for a more effective future.
Asking "where are our billionaires" as a progressive makes no sense and shows that you're not really understanding what being a progressive actually means.
We're against a billionaires; that's what it means. When we see that 13 billionaires pooled their money to purchase our presidency, a guy like Hakeem Jeffries has a knee-jerk response of "oh my God we got to go out and find ourselves some billionaires to compete with their billionaires".
A progressive response is "we have to beat the billionaires", not "we have to find our own version of Elon "biggest welfare queen ever" Musk."
Our greatest strength is people power, the wealthy, businesses & NGOs have a terrible track record of doing much to resist fascism. With the price of food & housing, healthcare and an aging & increasingly disabled population supplies & taking care of the vulnerable is where much of our money needs to go. Some of that may be helped by said mainstream entities but we can't rely on them too much.
Excellent piece. One of the most important points you made was not doing the same thing over and over but reinventing ourselves. The Repubs do it all the time… Tea Party, MAGA. Trump is entirely not suited to government, but he was different, so people had interest. Let’s reimagine new and better government programs: a better SS program, a better Medicare, but my god let’s name it something else. Because if we build back better, it is then something else. So let’s all get really creative, and with joy, love, and compassion, reinvent America. MAGA can’t destroy that.
Just subscribed, and you're preaching to the choir, but (as a profoundly unreligious person) I need something pragmatic: not uplifting fantasy, not more doomscrolling. I'm willing to work towards something, and I suspect there are more of us: suggestions?
One of the critical elements I will discuss over the next few weeks is the lack of capacity we have as a nation. We've become atrophied. I am getting to solutions soon.
The problem is the majority of the "Left" isn't progressive. They are also supported by the Oligarchs and AIPAC. They don't want the change Bernie speaks of, that's why they made sure his run for president failed. And, as noted in this article, rather than taking his momentum and building something, he flipped to supporting Biden and the same parry he spent his campaign railing against. So, until we can even identify what means to be "progressive" the Left will continue to flounder
Putting "Left" in quotes, capitalizing and pretending it means the wildly corrupt right leaning leadership of the Democratic Party who are mainly in the business of selling influence to massive corporations and oligarchs, just shows that you don't know what the left actually i is.
I can only imagine that you're using the definitions of the Republican Party who see everybody to the left of Stephen Miller as "the radical left lunatics".
According to the Big Orange moronic sack of sh*t, genocide Joe is a Hamas member.
Stop letting the right tell you what the left is. The left isn't the people that shut down Bernie, and that's the Democratic party leadership which is still in power.
What we need is a left-wing hostile takeover of the Democratic Party to make it into a left-wing party.
Until that happens, you're going to sound ridiculous every time you refer to them as being the left.
Putting "Left" in quotes, capitalizing and pretending it means the wildly corrupt right leaning leadership of the Democratic Party who are mainly in the business of selling influence to massive corporations and oligarchs, just shows that you don't know what the left actually i is.
I can only imagine that you're using the definitions of the Republican Party who see everybody to the left of Stephen Miller as "the radical left lunatics".
According to the Big Orange moronic sack of sh*t, genocide Joe is a Hamas member.
Stop letting the right tell you what the left is. The left isn't the people that shut down Bernie, and that's the Democratic party leadership which is still in power.
What we need is a left-wing hostile takeover of the Democratic Party to make it into a left-wing party.
Until that happens, you're going to sound ridiculous every time you refer to them as being the left.
Yes, let's build an alternative to the bankrupt and discredited Democratic Party. Let's build a political party of the working class: An anti-imperialist, anti-war, anti-racist party that will fight for the interests of the multi-national US working class, including immigrants and the poor and unemployed. All the progressives, independent socialists, DSA members, and anyone who believes in a society based on justice, equality, and peace should join together to build this alternative.
AOC and Bernie are our real leaders, carrying empathy and fairness with their messages for the America people. Where is our constitution? Why wasn't Trump tried for treason when his thugs attacked the capital. And now that he wants to be Putin's best friend. This is treason. America I thought was suppose to be by the people for the people. Look at the meeting of the great minds that created the constitution during the Philadelphia Convention in 1787.
I agree completely on the inefficacy of town-halls as a strategy for winning. High school Pep Rallies never helped a lousy football team to win, it just made everybody feel worse after the lousy team lost. So much hope!
The problem between the Left and Right is there an absence of sufficiently moral billionaires who believe in the Left’s agenda, who are willing to fund all of these organizations, institutions, and think-tanks.
Democrats may earn a lot of money for individual small donors, but Americans are weary of that following loss after loss, especially after the Schumer debacle on the CR. I’m pretty much done contributing to Democrats because they’ve proven over and over that they can’t win even the easiest of fights.
If we are to take back our democracy it will be left to individual Americans coming together to make it happen. And that depends entirely on how much we all want it. I’m convinced the Democratic Party is both unable and unwilling to restore democracy at this point, no matter how many $5 contributions we make because they keep failing us… again and again.
The ultimate question each of us will have to answer is “how much are we willing to risk for our Democracy and Freedom”? $5 donations aren’t going to cut it. Neither are pep rallies. Neither is a Democratic Party that folds at every opportunity to give the Republicans more power.
It seems to me that we need a vision. Everything else should flow from that. Companies that don't have a vision don't succeed. Political parties won't either. (Or movements. It should be a movement, not a party.)
If you don’t think that all the Trump voters wouldn’t be on board with liberal policies like a strong safety net, universal preK, universal health care and school lunches, if they could keep those they feel are undesirable, like they initially did to all of the non-white soldiers that weren’t allowed to participate in the GI Bill, you’d be naive.
I agree 100% with your article. I too have been frustrated with the lack of a "program". I would support and work to nurture a new movement with a specific platform and a program for implementation (think the 98%s version of 2025).
I've read that more than 90% of Democrats believe climate change is real and caused by human activity, particularly by big oil corporations like Exxon.
More than 90% of Democrats believe civil rights are sacred and should never be compromised for corporate profits.
More than 90% of Democrats believe banks should be regulated and taxpayers should stop bailing out major corporations.
More than 90% of Democrats believe corporate money has no place in politics, and want politicians to be people funded, not corporate or superPAC funded.
More than 70% of Democrats believe healthcare is a human right, want to join every developed nation on Earth to ensure universal healthcare.
More than 70% of Democrats believe in an end to the arms trade—indeed 77% wanted the Biden administration to stop arming Netanyahu.
Maybe that's a good place to start. Once we establish the goals, we then recruit like minded people to fund campaigns, and run for office(s).
Anti-intellectualism, rural urban divide, envy, failure to see the connection of the benefits they receive, constant repetition of destructive mantras like “government is the problem”, the overall lack of understanding how government works - I could go on. I grew up and spent my life in rural America and have watched this grow since the early 70s. There’s also the matter of how rural America is easily dazzled by celebrity.
There was never a more successful socialist nation than the US post war through the 1970s. The young adults who benefited from that are loathe to admit it. And they sold out their children and subsequent generations in order to lift the filthy rich even higher. Sad.
Thank you, I agree with all of it, and can be traced to the Reagan Revolution.
My grandfather used to say that Americans are in love with stupid, that’s why they voted for Reagan. He said the night they called the ‘80 election that he was the beginning of the end as we know it.
💯 You nailed it. I remember old farmers in the late 60s and early 70s, who were commonly democrats, and Iowa was a toss up in regard to who might win. I recall farmers saying they were glad to pay taxes, that those taxes supported others right there in the community who weren’t as well off and who needed help. And they were right. Keep in mind, these were WWII veterans who had been to Europe and the Pacific and knew the score. As that generation died, rural America lost its perspective. Reagan and Rush Limbaugh brainwashed them into thinking they got a raw deal. AgriCULTURE became AgriBUSINESS and attitudes began to shift. In the 60s and early 70s businessmen were the enemy. Reagan shifted that status onto “the government” and the change to agribusiness made farmers think they were big business, too. It was such a toxic time, and extremely saddening to watch. I remember an instance talking to my dad and he was bitching about how much money he paid in taxes to send welfare checks to “blacks in the city who won’t work.” I asked him how the amount he got in farm subsidies compared to what he paid in taxes and he erupted. “THAT’S DIFFERENT! THAT’S MY BUSINESS!” Veins throbbed on his forehead. I just shrugged and told him it’s just welfare like any other, and if he’s collecting more than he’s paying, maybe he’s the problem rather than mythical lazy minorities in the city. Even in those years, the flow of federal dollars was substantial. That hasn’t changed. But the farmers increasingly differentiate between their right to collect subsidies versus college students, people who are unemployed, underemployed, unemployable, or disabled. Previous generations weren’t that way.
Exactly. The fact that farm country aren’t crying about the kids who’ll not eat because their goods aren’t being shipped they’re crying only because they didn’t get paid.
If they had gotten paid and then Trump halted their delivery, they’d be cheering him on, “yeah they need to learn to be self sufficient like us farmers”. Not one of the doe eyes sympathy articles I’ve read has one farmer said anything about it, they’re not even saying, well if they aren’t going to sent it over seas, we should distribute it amongst the poor.
NOPE, they won’t, it’s that they want to be paid. They didn’t realise the USAID they cheered to be closed down was set up to keep them in business and give them a steady customer.., oh who is that…,
Guess Americans need to learn things the hard way.
Correct. The food stamp program was set up to benefit farmers by paying for crops that would rot in the field and distributing it to people who would otherwise go hungry. The farmers only could see someone “getting something for free” and failed to connect that the party getting something for free was them being paid for a crop that would otherwise rot. Myopic. And unforgivable in my opinion. I’m quite smug about Trump stuff coming down on the heads of farmers and rural America, and make no mistake, this is my heritage and where I live. I desperately long for the voices of the WWII generation who understood. I think the loss of that generation accounts for a lot of what is wrong today. Those men who saw Hitler’s death camps wouldn’t stand for it.
OMG yes. And the Republicans KNEW THIS! STILL KNOW IT.
It’s why they systematically destroyed the public education system in this country. They appealed to The Selfish.
None of these people remember that Reagan fired the border patrol to break up
farm unions, he threatened the public saying it needed to be done because of the high cost of American wages are destroying industry.
We don’t need tariffs, why should companies pay so much for steel, just so they have a guy pounding metal and putting on car bumpers enough money to buy a house, and what about all the money in pensions, and wanting breaks and always greedy wanting to make more money. How is a businessman to survive, they should be grateful they have a job.
You know what, you want to get paid and want to be greedy, well there are people over there waiting in line to get here and persue the American Dream; and will work with no breaks or benefits and be glad!
We don’t need company towns, employers shouldn’t have to feel obligated stay in the country to support entire communities, these people should be able to open their own businesses, no more manual labor, let “those guys” do the labor, we’re a country of entrepreneurs. We’ll get you cheap materials, made for pennies over there, and YOU will buy them, for cheaper than it costs to make them.
I know I’m not the only one who remembers these same people crying about bringing jobs back, are the children and grandchildren of the people that fell for all the 80s Republican rhetoric.
Also, IMO all the “migrant hate”, is also because of their success despite it all, they came here with the clothes on their back and bottle of water, and in 10-15 years will own a business or two, and end up buying the house next door, and OMG, doesn’t speak a word of English.
Instead of bragging and being proud of what we have been told as a quintessentially American tale, they want them deported.
I know. We went from “we’re all in this together” to “get your own”, the Reagan Revolution was a young people’s revolution as well, the right targeted the disaffected hippies. The Boomers got all the benefits of post WW2, New Deal America that their parents fought for because they were depression survivors.
They were the generation that federally funded colleges that kept tuition low enough to work part time and put themselves to school.
The 80s were when the Boomers came up and decided they didn’t want to “be in it together”, why is the government making me pay for “them”, I got here with no help.
I love that my grandfather taught me well, he used to say that you should always pay attention to politics, because it affects every aspect of your life; and people who don’t care or don’t vote, are always the ones that yell the most when the consequences affect their life, and want to cry “why didn’t anyone tell me” and they’ll deserve it.
My grandpas mind was stolen in the Pacific Theatre, but he was brilliant, and tell my niece he’d have made the most beautiful speeches in Congress; he talked so much about politics no one really listened. He was so right.
His other was, “these stupid Americans don’t see this, if they are dumb enough to give the country away to the Republicans all they’re going to do is hand it over to the rich, and these idiots will be living in the streets LOVING THEM FOR IT”
This mind you in the ‘80s, and I wish I knew what in all the letters he wrote to Reagan and HW…
In answer to where do we start? bluesky has become a place where we can meet and discuss things - albeit in short form format. In answer to who are OUR billionaires, in addition to poor old overworked Soros, there is Reid Hoffman and Mark Cuban, to greater or lesser degrees, and maybe also MacKenzie Scott and Melinda Gates.
Those who give their money to Republicans expect a return, which they get. Who is gonna give their money expecting no return just bc it's the right thing? Christians SAY it's what they do, but they don't, especially when they don't read the rest of the text.
Corbin. You describe the symptoms, not the problem. The reality is this - the 'right' has no inspiration, no vision, no beauty. They are retarded, as in they live far in the past, and live inside a historical propaganda bubble of self-deception and hubris. Their entire MO relies upon 'taking,' as has always been the case with empty vessels. Their ornamentation is self-righteous piety to a religious myth that puts god-like humans of white skin in charge of some god's Earth. This myth is biochemically addictive and malignantly terminal.
What fuels this taking is capitalism, the economic formula that engineers the artifacts of hyper-consumption via hyper-destructive extraction and ensuing pollution. What fuels capitalism? Oil, gas, technology, nukes and hydro-power, and their latest handmaiden - AI computing. There is nothing NEW about any of this - it is the well-paved road to Perdition, which all capitalists believe they will escape with the religious get-out-of-jail-free card or self-defined repentance. In order to infuse Stockholm Syndrome on the rest of us, they employ pernicious dominance and many forms of violence.
Rallies actually threaten them. Why else do they desire so savagely to eliminate them and hold those leaders hostage? Rallies are much more effective than tired and useless Party Politics, especially the Fascism-Lite of the modern neo-liberal Democratic party. I have never been in any party other the SWP decades ago. The reason people like Bernie, AOC, Crockett, Omar and others have agency is because they are ecological socialists who comprehend that capitalism is a parasitic dead end of ignominious death for much of the planet,
Stress within the populace will evince its own new path forward. As Harris often said, 'we are not going back.' The quantum field is massive when compared to the cancerous nihilism of Putin, TFG, Muck, Leo, Orban, et. al. But you must understand that no omelet will be made without a lot of broken eggs. The tragedy is that material and psychological addictions must fail before a desperate realization emerges that there are no off ramps to courage, strength, honor and reverence for life and Earth.
It appears to me that you are one important person among many to continue to create, via healthy stressors, ideas, strategies, observations, inventories, analyses, and energies so that many others will eschew depression and choose the power of humble cooperation. As e pluribus unum states quite clearly - from many, ONE.
They can do that because they have the time and money for it. I work 50+ hours a week and have family, am I supposed to quit my job to work on this year round infrastructure building? How would I pay my rent then? How am I meant to fund a media empire, rob a bank? Just start buying lotto tickets and hope. Like you're not wrong that it would work better, but you have to understand "stop going to rallies, found a media empire and work year round on recruiting people" is fundamentally no actionable advice". We've got to work with the time and resources we have.
I'm sorry to be so critical, but stating that things requiring massive funding and large amounts of full-time workers are more effective isn't helpful. It's not a new observation, it's the basic problem US progressive movements have been working against for the last decade
Relax, friend. Your part of this fight is to keep working and spread the word when you can. All the hundreds of thousands of people getting laid off from the government will be the ones with the "time" to work out the structure of the resistance. The national parks people are outdoorsy, nationwide, and f-ing passed. I expect great things to come from that group.
You can just talk to people. Be a good person who adds something positive to the world. We need people like that. (This is my opinion, of course, but strongly held.) Decency is contagious. Set an example.
You're absolutely right that we should all do that. But that's not how you changed the world. That's just a bottom line for human decency. That's not going to stop right when billionaires. For that we all need to be fighters in addition to being decent people who talk to each other and treat each other with respect.
Great article.
We protest with pink hats; they protest with AK47s.
Harris ran an excellent campaign, but she was running a campaign and they were fighting a war.
They are willing to go scorched earth; we are not.
They are unbound by the law; we are hobbled by it.
For them, winning is everything, even if they can’t govern. For us, governing is everything even if we can’t win. (Failing to realize that if you don’t win you can’t govern.)
Bernie is awesome, but we need someone young, someone who comes from outside politics who isn’t shackled to the “inside game.” Someone like, dare I say, you know who. And yes we need to build systems that ensure we hold power. We need our own project 2025.
OMG Harris ran a pathetic campaign! She played Hillary and was all anti-Trump and supported Joe Biden’s despicable Zionist war on Gaza. We need to get the fuck out of the DP!
Yes there's a reason they call it "the political party where social movements go to die" We are in this mess because of their weakness. I don't entirely blame Clinton, it's broader than him but he was certainly a big factor in moving the Dems away from New Deal type policies. West Wing Democrats let's call them.
No thanks. I will not affiliate w/ a “someone-like-you-know-who.” You are suggesting hypocrisy if that's your idea of turning things around. There are ways to remain honest & have integrity while combating the vile Republican machine. We can openly refuse to oppess the poor and harm innocent people, for example. We can insist on treating all people like humans who possess dignity for starters & speak up boldly for all that is Right & courageously confront & oppose all that is wrong, regardless of the consequences. But we canNOT behave like Republicans have behaved!
You would do well to sit down & shut up. Please don’t suggest that more people embrace selfishness & exploitation… & sell their soul.
Yikes that’s a bit harsh!
But, I liken this moment to World War II. We had to do some distasteful things in that war in order to save the world. We had to understand that fighting fair was a recipe for certain defeat. We had to know that a war means you have to kill more of them than they do of you. We eventually had to use nuclear weapons. That doesn’t mean we give up the values and principles we stand for. We didn’t in WWII, but we did fight to win. That’s what I am proposing.
Yeah, I'm sorry for being so harsh. Sometimes I think I just need a break from knowing what's going on so I can refresh and not dwell on the level of "fed up." I didn't deserve your mild response to my anger. Thank you, and I'm sorry.
No worries. I feel exactly the same way, and had to apologize to someone on here just a few days ago. Thank you and I really believe good will prevail in the end.
Hello. I am very new to the political space. Who is “you know who” in this context?
Thank you,
A very confused 26 year old woman
I am pretty sure they mean Luigi. This isn't Facebook we can actually say his name.
WE do! Its called the Port Huron Statement
Nick, the problem is not a clear Progressive vision. The problem is lack of building a national alternative democratic org. Bernie and AOC doing everything but this, as Corbin notes.
I’m reading it. Tom Hayden for Christ sake. Never got off the ground. So much effort. So many words. Can we REALLY stand against oligarchs? In our comfortable cocoons do we want to try?
The cocoons of the 50's were far worse, especially for white men. One had to conform w the norms which were pretty horrendous at the time and so did your family. So, to come up with SDS, that took massive balls. Throw off the comforts of stifling postwar conformity and blaze a new trail. That was the 60s in a nutshell.
I'm just a wee bit younger. You woulda found my ass getting teargassed in Miami Beach '72. In the 80s I rented Haydns old room at Jane Fonda's house in Whitley Heights. Tom did make it to Cal state Senator (Westside, of course)
Your brother's bound and gagged and they've tied him to a chair. Wont you please come to Chicago for a riot
That's what I grew up with. The kids prolly think all this now is a really bad massively multiplayer game on the net...
I just glanced at your profile. It appears we went to different schools together so I'm curious. Where did you grow up and how old were you when you knew you were hippie? Oh remember the Paul McCartney look-alike contest? 😜
"You know who?" That's not very helpful. Do you mean Luigi? He's a distraction. Sure lots of people got excited by him but as far as we know he had to connection to any sort of actual community trying to change things, any more than Ted Kazynski did. He appeals to a vague anti-elite populism that many politically disengaged people have.
I meant Trump.
Certain things must be done. I'd like to thank the writers and the comment-producers. I'd like to thank Hitler.
What about practical solution or actions. You clearly identified the problem, but didn't propose any real world solutions except in very general terms. We've had enough of that. Time to propose actions that can make a difference. Raise money from wealthy Independents and Democrats like Buffet to make a difference.
I'm getting there. I want to lay the foundations first where we are, why the Democratic Party as it stands isn't going to deliver us. I will be getting to proposed political and economic solutions, but I want to make sure as much of the audience is on the same page as possible beforehand. I won't drag it out like Lost or Yellowjackets, so don't sweat.
I’m so glad you have some ideas toward building a solid foundation! I’m hoping you start laying out your ideas so we can begin to take actions. We the people want to break through and make a difference. Please, start the process‼️
I recognize what you are saying. Every piece of this: protest, town hall, civil disobedience, etc, are just tools. There is no nuclear weapon to fix everything… so we use what we know and then learn on the fly. Ask Ukraine whether protests can overthrow a Russian asset.
I’m ready to go and know many others who are too. We’re just waiting on our marching orders. We all want an actual plan and solid infrastructure to build this. Let us know what we can do.
Perhaps it’s time to take some lessons from the development of Teddy Roosevelt’s Bull Moose party; fits nicely into the cycle of history here.
The building of the right-wing political infrastructure began with the famous Powell memo of 1971 urging powerful, wealthy businessmen to invest in building such an infrastructure, e.g., investing in scholarships for right wing students, funding "research" institutions in universities, investing in communication media, etc. They had the money and the organization (Chambers of Commerce) to make it happen. I think you are absolutely right that this is what we lack but I question where is the BIG money and organizational structure to make it happen on the left? Or, how can we use mass movement politics to do so?
To the person that implied that Kamala lost because she just "ran an excellent campaign", but was up against people fighting a war, I don't mean to be rude about it, but that's completely wrong.
She didn't lose, the Republicans stole the election, but it is a travesty that she didn't win by a landslide, because even if they hadn't stolen it, she would have barely squeaked out a win, against the convicted fraudster and rapist who attacked our country, and is deep in dementia, and holds about 90% ideas that most Americans find abhorrent. Not slaughtering a fool like Trump metaphorically on the campaign trail is forever to the shame of present-day Democrats.
She ran a campaign that tried to be all things to all people, but with most of the energy going to appealing to Republicans, and very little effort to appeal to the progressive vast majority of their own voters, which is typically the boneheaded democratic mistake they never seem to learn from; it's hubris that usually brings everybody down and this is no different, but in addition to the hubris I think it's the loser instinct to want to suck up to power even when that power is opposing you.
They assume that they can appeal to Republicans and turn them into Democrats, but Bernie has done that a lot more than they have by taking the opposite strategy, actually going out and making his case for why the maggots should change their minds to embrace things like Medicare for all that would improve their lives, rather than trying to be Republican lite, which never works, but hope springs eternal for the corporate Democrats.
She did some things right which really helped, and was even six points up shortly after picking Tim Walz which was absolutely by far the best decision she ever made in her life, and she did some super obvious boneheaded mistakes that a person of below average intelligence but with progressive values simply would never make, whereas she is a highly intelligent person who made boneheaded mistakes because of her establishment corporatist perspective, which causes a lot of establishment insiders to do stupid things even though they're smart people; we all have blind spots.
The establishment has made sure that the Democratic blind spots favor oligarchs and a corporate agenda, mostly by bribing them .
After picking Tim Walz, and Tim was proving to be the awesome secret weapon and by far the obvious best asset to the Kamala campaign, which all progressives knew he would be as soon as we learned about what he did for Minnesota, the Biden professional Democratic strategists who specialize in losing, got to her, and using their perfectly honed instincts for sniffing out the very best way to lose, they incredibly made her put Tim under wraps, and made him tone down his rhetoric, telling him to stop using the viral most popular slogans any Democrat ever came up with, they snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory; sniffing out the hard-hitting rhetoric that was so successful, basically punching the bullies in the nose, in an emergency effort to avoid the threat of winning.
The Biden advisors found his obviously superior talent for campaigning way beyond the pale and told them to go back to worrying about decorum and avoiding offending Republicans at all costs including alienating Democratic voters and losing elections.
They said let us spit in Bernie's eye after he offered to be a surrogate for her; still the most popular politician in America, but they knew better than to go with somebody like that.
Their superior loser instincts said "no she should campaign with billionaires and oligarchs instead; the working class always responds positively when lectured from above by the robber barons that are killing us all, plus Trump has billionaire oligarchs so why can't we?"
The same team still sometimes like to humiliate themselves by suggesting after the election that Biden would have won, because remember they were the ones who are sticking to their guns and insisting we have to run him after he lost the power of speech, and had to be removed from the public eye during The sundowner hours, and they had to come up with excuses for why his brain was failing every minute that he was in the public eye, even before 4:30 p.m..
They had hundreds of thousands of voters desperately begging them to stop their disgusting record setting genocide in Gaza, or they wouldn't be able to bring themselves to vote for a party willing to keep bombing, torturing and raping more children to death.
Kamala's excellent establishment loser instincts told her to lie to them and say that she was working day and night for a ceasefire, even took one of our best Congress members down multiple pegs, by convincing her to lie about that on the national stage; obviously the people that felt so strongly about the genocide which I include myself among although I did vote for Kamala, weren't fooled for a nanosecond by the lies and it just pissed us off more.
Progressives were obviously wildly underestimated by the liars, and the Democratic establishment always does that. We all know she wasn't working on peace, and she even insisted on silencing the one Palestinian voice that might have been heard from the campaign; not because that person was going to criticize her; she promised to endorse Kamala from the stage and submitted her very pro-Kamala speech ahead of time.
Kamala's establishment instincts also told her that when asked to differentiate herself from the historically unpopular Biden, her best answer was she could think of nothing she would have done differently. That one comment likely cost her hundreds of thousands of votes.
All the intelligent people in the country (and the entire world) are worried about the sabre rattling the US does with Iran, and progressives know that by far Obama's best accomplishment was the Iran nuclear deal, that face painted cobweb headed Hitler 2.0 took us out of, following his instincts to attempt the destruction of all life.
So kamala's establishment instincts told her that when asked who the biggest threat to the United States is, she would say" me too", not to amplify the outrage of women who are abused by men, but to amplify the dangerous world war risking fake outrage of trump against Iran.
Israel the country that's been trying to force us to do a proxy war with Iran on their behalf, like they did with our worst foreign policy blunder, the Iraqi genocide where we slaughtered about a million of them, under powerful arm twisting by the corrupt Israel lobby, is obviously the most destabilizing country in the Middle East by a country mile, and about the most dangerous country in the world for the United States outside of Russia.
So, Democratic establishment instincts like Kamala has vis-a-vis foreign policy, are a lot more like Trump's than they are like a progressive, which isn't surprising given the bipartisan history of warmongering in this country. After all it was Hillary who whipped up the votes needed to abdicate Congressional responsibility and allow bush to decide to attack Iraq at any time without consulting them; she contributed to the murder of a million people by playing politics.
Go check out Greg Palast. We need to get the left to stop going along with the establishment lie that Trump won the election fair and square. He stole the election even if you ignore the fact that no election with 13 billionaires funding one side, can truly be called democratic. They removed 4.7 million voters targeted by race mostly black, from the voter rolls in this era of Jim Crow 2.0. that was more than enough to change the election outcome even with the billionaires throwing their monet at it.
There are no heroes here except for the people that the establishment Democrats try to suppress. Establishment Democrats and establishment Republicans are far more aligned than they let on; agreed on almost every aspect of foreign policy, unchanged for decades, and the terrible setup for giving away the power of Congress, transferring it to the president, giving that branch (no accident that it's the most removed from citizen control) the power to destroy our country, defeating what we've always touted as the brilliant system of checks and balances with co-equal branches of government.
Without a hostile takeover and complete restructuring of the democratic party to get rid of the corruption, there's no hope of the Democrats being an effective foil for the Republican war machine.
As long as both parties are taking the Supreme Court's invitation to heart, and trying to win elections by simply out spending the other side, which of course three lies on sucking up to the richest people in the world, and that requires abandoning all Democratic and progressive principles in favor of taking the path of oligarchs towards a kleptocracy; it's quite clear at this point that the fascists are only interested in the presidency in order to treat the United States like a corporation by hostile raiders; they're taking it over breaking it and selling off the parts to make themselves fabulously rich by destroying their own country.
For me the ultimate blunder was thinking that just because Liz Cheney was the lead Republican on the Jan 6 committee and a loud voice in warning America , that she would be a asset on the campaign trail and win over centrist Republicans. Really? Losing a third of the electorate including most center left Democrats was just a master stroke of how to lose this election. Every freaking Democrat knows and loathes the name Cheney and what her father did. They also remembered that she supported his policies over 90% of the time. Maybe the DNC thought they were being clever, maybe Kamala thought she was being a shrewd tactician. .for my money one of the dumbest moves ever and if that’s any indication of the intellectual and tactical prowess of the Democratic Party then sadly she and they and we, deserved to lose. It’s time for a coalition of progressive thinkers and who know how to build for the long term to take over the Party. Priority 1 . . build by whatever means necessary a 24/7 media outlet/voice to counter FOX and develop for the long term a counterpart to ALEX and the Heritage Foundation.
ALL OF THIS!
Woo hoo! Yeah!
Pretty much, yeah.
I hope you make this comment a post of your own, it's a great analysis. (Bored political science major over here)
( I meant Greg Vinson's above, yours is great too Skeeter. Comment threads are tricky.
No worries White Squirrel’s Nest.. .spread the word far and wide.
Greg- you are so correct- it makes me so sad though- I’ve had so many conversations with friends in line with all you’ve laid out- only to shake our heads and say- why don’t more folks figure this all out. I was thinking about how Greg Palast had all the ammo and would anyone do what the Republicans did- force a recount in even ONE swing state- never…🥺 I fear that 2026 will be meaningless- rigged- and yet there are so many voices right now saying there’s hope in 2026- which would only be a tiny part in this hideous game anyway- jeeeeezus….
Another of the right wing's efforts that has paid off over decades has been their big-money backed efforts to install conservative university presidents.
I agree with your premises, but I don't see where the resources are. I don't see where the money is. Bernie raised $250 million from small donors? Musk dropped that much on Trump in one donation when he sneezed. Now he's dropped another hundred million on his PAC for appearing in a Tesla commercial in the White House driveway.
Where are our billionaires? It was right-wing billionaires who built and continue to support the vast right-wing propaganda cabal. We all know their names. The Kochs, Mercers, Waltons, McMahons, etc. Half of them are in the current administration.
We have left-wing podcasters, radio shows and even a TV network (FreeSpeechTV), but where are the billionaires supporting this messaging? MSNBC has a couple of progressive voices on in the evening, but even they seem hobbled by stodgy, conservative management that ejects their arguably strongest progressive voices while continuing to stand behind their center-right morning show that had a huge hand in Trump's 2016 win.
How do we get people to understand that this struggle is not Democrats against Republicans, but working people against the billionaire class? We don't seem to have any billionaires stepping up. George Soros is blamed by the right for financing every bit of our grassroots efforts, but as we all know, he doesn't.
MSNBC is currently for sale. Where is our Rupert Murdoch that has the means to buy it and dump a half billion dollars in it to develop a truly progressive, unified voice to counter FOX, Newsmax, OAN and all of the other well-funded right-wing propaganda outlets? Where are the well-heeled, well-connected millionaires that have the means and the connections to pull together an investment group to build some of this infrastructure you speak of?
Anyone in the working or middle classes looking for a billionaire to save them is like a medieval peasant looking for a lord who will take a little bit less from him.
I completely agree thie movement has to be need more effective than just having rallies. It needs to be treated as a business with goal, vision, strategy and accountability. Many of the organizations, businesses exist but are not effectively aligned or everyone is working in there own bubble. I don't think it has to be as centralized as the current republican organization because frankly, we are more capable, educated, can follow order etc.
It won't happen under the current democratic leadership or with the current democratic structure as it is based solely in volunteers commitment which while important, does not have the skills to create this. It may be better to have it in cooperation with the party.
You need a broader coalition. The business community has to be brought in. The problem with many progressive messages is it is them vs us. We need a new economic message that attracts workers and business. There are many businesses, especially high tech businesses that want strong work force development and believe that treating employees well makes for good business. The progressives message is often the people, against growth and profits. That is a very limited look at the economy. Right now if the republicans are changing the script, why are the democrates/progressives not creating new policies for a more effective future.
Asking "where are our billionaires" as a progressive makes no sense and shows that you're not really understanding what being a progressive actually means.
We're against a billionaires; that's what it means. When we see that 13 billionaires pooled their money to purchase our presidency, a guy like Hakeem Jeffries has a knee-jerk response of "oh my God we got to go out and find ourselves some billionaires to compete with their billionaires".
A progressive response is "we have to beat the billionaires", not "we have to find our own version of Elon "biggest welfare queen ever" Musk."
Our greatest strength is people power, the wealthy, businesses & NGOs have a terrible track record of doing much to resist fascism. With the price of food & housing, healthcare and an aging & increasingly disabled population supplies & taking care of the vulnerable is where much of our money needs to go. Some of that may be helped by said mainstream entities but we can't rely on them too much.
Excellent piece. One of the most important points you made was not doing the same thing over and over but reinventing ourselves. The Repubs do it all the time… Tea Party, MAGA. Trump is entirely not suited to government, but he was different, so people had interest. Let’s reimagine new and better government programs: a better SS program, a better Medicare, but my god let’s name it something else. Because if we build back better, it is then something else. So let’s all get really creative, and with joy, love, and compassion, reinvent America. MAGA can’t destroy that.
wanna bet?
Just subscribed, and you're preaching to the choir, but (as a profoundly unreligious person) I need something pragmatic: not uplifting fantasy, not more doomscrolling. I'm willing to work towards something, and I suspect there are more of us: suggestions?
One of the critical elements I will discuss over the next few weeks is the lack of capacity we have as a nation. We've become atrophied. I am getting to solutions soon.
Dems need bloodthirsty ideologues
Goin Hi when they Go Low aint gonna get it
The problem is the majority of the "Left" isn't progressive. They are also supported by the Oligarchs and AIPAC. They don't want the change Bernie speaks of, that's why they made sure his run for president failed. And, as noted in this article, rather than taking his momentum and building something, he flipped to supporting Biden and the same parry he spent his campaign railing against. So, until we can even identify what means to be "progressive" the Left will continue to flounder
Putting "Left" in quotes, capitalizing and pretending it means the wildly corrupt right leaning leadership of the Democratic Party who are mainly in the business of selling influence to massive corporations and oligarchs, just shows that you don't know what the left actually i is.
I can only imagine that you're using the definitions of the Republican Party who see everybody to the left of Stephen Miller as "the radical left lunatics".
According to the Big Orange moronic sack of sh*t, genocide Joe is a Hamas member.
Stop letting the right tell you what the left is. The left isn't the people that shut down Bernie, and that's the Democratic party leadership which is still in power.
What we need is a left-wing hostile takeover of the Democratic Party to make it into a left-wing party.
Until that happens, you're going to sound ridiculous every time you refer to them as being the left.
Putting "Left" in quotes, capitalizing and pretending it means the wildly corrupt right leaning leadership of the Democratic Party who are mainly in the business of selling influence to massive corporations and oligarchs, just shows that you don't know what the left actually i is.
I can only imagine that you're using the definitions of the Republican Party who see everybody to the left of Stephen Miller as "the radical left lunatics".
According to the Big Orange moronic sack of sh*t, genocide Joe is a Hamas member.
Stop letting the right tell you what the left is. The left isn't the people that shut down Bernie, and that's the Democratic party leadership which is still in power.
What we need is a left-wing hostile takeover of the Democratic Party to make it into a left-wing party.
Until that happens, you're going to sound ridiculous every time you refer to them as being the left.
Yes. We need a vision.
Yes, let's build an alternative to the bankrupt and discredited Democratic Party. Let's build a political party of the working class: An anti-imperialist, anti-war, anti-racist party that will fight for the interests of the multi-national US working class, including immigrants and the poor and unemployed. All the progressives, independent socialists, DSA members, and anyone who believes in a society based on justice, equality, and peace should join together to build this alternative.
I agree with the premise. I also agree with - “If you build it, they will come.” So, let’s lay out the strategy and name it.
AOC and Bernie are our real leaders, carrying empathy and fairness with their messages for the America people. Where is our constitution? Why wasn't Trump tried for treason when his thugs attacked the capital. And now that he wants to be Putin's best friend. This is treason. America I thought was suppose to be by the people for the people. Look at the meeting of the great minds that created the constitution during the Philadelphia Convention in 1787.
I agree completely on the inefficacy of town-halls as a strategy for winning. High school Pep Rallies never helped a lousy football team to win, it just made everybody feel worse after the lousy team lost. So much hope!
The problem between the Left and Right is there an absence of sufficiently moral billionaires who believe in the Left’s agenda, who are willing to fund all of these organizations, institutions, and think-tanks.
Democrats may earn a lot of money for individual small donors, but Americans are weary of that following loss after loss, especially after the Schumer debacle on the CR. I’m pretty much done contributing to Democrats because they’ve proven over and over that they can’t win even the easiest of fights.
If we are to take back our democracy it will be left to individual Americans coming together to make it happen. And that depends entirely on how much we all want it. I’m convinced the Democratic Party is both unable and unwilling to restore democracy at this point, no matter how many $5 contributions we make because they keep failing us… again and again.
The ultimate question each of us will have to answer is “how much are we willing to risk for our Democracy and Freedom”? $5 donations aren’t going to cut it. Neither are pep rallies. Neither is a Democratic Party that folds at every opportunity to give the Republicans more power.
We should model ourselves on the civil rights movement. (At least I think so.)
So who is the democratic billionaire ‘Koch’ that’s going to bankroll it to kickstart this new machine? That’s how the right did it.
they also did it with The Chicago School, PBS specials, and ideas that seemed logical and like common sense. That's the other element.
It seems to me that we need a vision. Everything else should flow from that. Companies that don't have a vision don't succeed. Political parties won't either. (Or movements. It should be a movement, not a party.)
Where do we start?
Discussing the roots of the symptoms I think.
The “roots” are simple and obvious, RACISM!
If you don’t think that all the Trump voters wouldn’t be on board with liberal policies like a strong safety net, universal preK, universal health care and school lunches, if they could keep those they feel are undesirable, like they initially did to all of the non-white soldiers that weren’t allowed to participate in the GI Bill, you’d be naive.
I agree 100% with your article. I too have been frustrated with the lack of a "program". I would support and work to nurture a new movement with a specific platform and a program for implementation (think the 98%s version of 2025).
I've read that more than 90% of Democrats believe climate change is real and caused by human activity, particularly by big oil corporations like Exxon.
More than 90% of Democrats believe civil rights are sacred and should never be compromised for corporate profits.
More than 90% of Democrats believe banks should be regulated and taxpayers should stop bailing out major corporations.
More than 90% of Democrats believe corporate money has no place in politics, and want politicians to be people funded, not corporate or superPAC funded.
More than 70% of Democrats believe healthcare is a human right, want to join every developed nation on Earth to ensure universal healthcare.
More than 70% of Democrats believe in an end to the arms trade—indeed 77% wanted the Biden administration to stop arming Netanyahu.
Maybe that's a good place to start. Once we establish the goals, we then recruit like minded people to fund campaigns, and run for office(s).
I have zero solution, which I guess makes me part of the problem. However, I like what I know...and it's not much...about The Poor People's Campaign.
Racism is part of it, but the problem goes much deeper.
Which is? No sarcasm
Anti-intellectualism, rural urban divide, envy, failure to see the connection of the benefits they receive, constant repetition of destructive mantras like “government is the problem”, the overall lack of understanding how government works - I could go on. I grew up and spent my life in rural America and have watched this grow since the early 70s. There’s also the matter of how rural America is easily dazzled by celebrity.
There was never a more successful socialist nation than the US post war through the 1970s. The young adults who benefited from that are loathe to admit it. And they sold out their children and subsequent generations in order to lift the filthy rich even higher. Sad.
The Reagan Revolution appealed to the 1st generation that didn’t experience the a suffering that was “normal” for 100s of years
Thank you, I agree with all of it, and can be traced to the Reagan Revolution.
My grandfather used to say that Americans are in love with stupid, that’s why they voted for Reagan. He said the night they called the ‘80 election that he was the beginning of the end as we know it.
The entire campaign
💯 You nailed it. I remember old farmers in the late 60s and early 70s, who were commonly democrats, and Iowa was a toss up in regard to who might win. I recall farmers saying they were glad to pay taxes, that those taxes supported others right there in the community who weren’t as well off and who needed help. And they were right. Keep in mind, these were WWII veterans who had been to Europe and the Pacific and knew the score. As that generation died, rural America lost its perspective. Reagan and Rush Limbaugh brainwashed them into thinking they got a raw deal. AgriCULTURE became AgriBUSINESS and attitudes began to shift. In the 60s and early 70s businessmen were the enemy. Reagan shifted that status onto “the government” and the change to agribusiness made farmers think they were big business, too. It was such a toxic time, and extremely saddening to watch. I remember an instance talking to my dad and he was bitching about how much money he paid in taxes to send welfare checks to “blacks in the city who won’t work.” I asked him how the amount he got in farm subsidies compared to what he paid in taxes and he erupted. “THAT’S DIFFERENT! THAT’S MY BUSINESS!” Veins throbbed on his forehead. I just shrugged and told him it’s just welfare like any other, and if he’s collecting more than he’s paying, maybe he’s the problem rather than mythical lazy minorities in the city. Even in those years, the flow of federal dollars was substantial. That hasn’t changed. But the farmers increasingly differentiate between their right to collect subsidies versus college students, people who are unemployed, underemployed, unemployable, or disabled. Previous generations weren’t that way.
Exactly. The fact that farm country aren’t crying about the kids who’ll not eat because their goods aren’t being shipped they’re crying only because they didn’t get paid.
If they had gotten paid and then Trump halted their delivery, they’d be cheering him on, “yeah they need to learn to be self sufficient like us farmers”. Not one of the doe eyes sympathy articles I’ve read has one farmer said anything about it, they’re not even saying, well if they aren’t going to sent it over seas, we should distribute it amongst the poor.
NOPE, they won’t, it’s that they want to be paid. They didn’t realise the USAID they cheered to be closed down was set up to keep them in business and give them a steady customer.., oh who is that…,
Guess Americans need to learn things the hard way.
Correct. The food stamp program was set up to benefit farmers by paying for crops that would rot in the field and distributing it to people who would otherwise go hungry. The farmers only could see someone “getting something for free” and failed to connect that the party getting something for free was them being paid for a crop that would otherwise rot. Myopic. And unforgivable in my opinion. I’m quite smug about Trump stuff coming down on the heads of farmers and rural America, and make no mistake, this is my heritage and where I live. I desperately long for the voices of the WWII generation who understood. I think the loss of that generation accounts for a lot of what is wrong today. Those men who saw Hitler’s death camps wouldn’t stand for it.
I have to mention, I’m very much enjoying our conversation. I feel less alone in the universe, and helps me feel better to know others who know.
Thanks for sharing that insight.
OMG yes. And the Republicans KNEW THIS! STILL KNOW IT.
It’s why they systematically destroyed the public education system in this country. They appealed to The Selfish.
None of these people remember that Reagan fired the border patrol to break up
farm unions, he threatened the public saying it needed to be done because of the high cost of American wages are destroying industry.
We don’t need tariffs, why should companies pay so much for steel, just so they have a guy pounding metal and putting on car bumpers enough money to buy a house, and what about all the money in pensions, and wanting breaks and always greedy wanting to make more money. How is a businessman to survive, they should be grateful they have a job.
You know what, you want to get paid and want to be greedy, well there are people over there waiting in line to get here and persue the American Dream; and will work with no breaks or benefits and be glad!
We don’t need company towns, employers shouldn’t have to feel obligated stay in the country to support entire communities, these people should be able to open their own businesses, no more manual labor, let “those guys” do the labor, we’re a country of entrepreneurs. We’ll get you cheap materials, made for pennies over there, and YOU will buy them, for cheaper than it costs to make them.
I know I’m not the only one who remembers these same people crying about bringing jobs back, are the children and grandchildren of the people that fell for all the 80s Republican rhetoric.
Also, IMO all the “migrant hate”, is also because of their success despite it all, they came here with the clothes on their back and bottle of water, and in 10-15 years will own a business or two, and end up buying the house next door, and OMG, doesn’t speak a word of English.
Instead of bragging and being proud of what we have been told as a quintessentially American tale, they want them deported.
I know. We went from “we’re all in this together” to “get your own”, the Reagan Revolution was a young people’s revolution as well, the right targeted the disaffected hippies. The Boomers got all the benefits of post WW2, New Deal America that their parents fought for because they were depression survivors.
They were the generation that federally funded colleges that kept tuition low enough to work part time and put themselves to school.
The 80s were when the Boomers came up and decided they didn’t want to “be in it together”, why is the government making me pay for “them”, I got here with no help.
I love that my grandfather taught me well, he used to say that you should always pay attention to politics, because it affects every aspect of your life; and people who don’t care or don’t vote, are always the ones that yell the most when the consequences affect their life, and want to cry “why didn’t anyone tell me” and they’ll deserve it.
My grandpas mind was stolen in the Pacific Theatre, but he was brilliant, and tell my niece he’d have made the most beautiful speeches in Congress; he talked so much about politics no one really listened. He was so right.
His other was, “these stupid Americans don’t see this, if they are dumb enough to give the country away to the Republicans all they’re going to do is hand it over to the rich, and these idiots will be living in the streets LOVING THEM FOR IT”
This mind you in the ‘80s, and I wish I knew what in all the letters he wrote to Reagan and HW…
In answer to where do we start? bluesky has become a place where we can meet and discuss things - albeit in short form format. In answer to who are OUR billionaires, in addition to poor old overworked Soros, there is Reid Hoffman and Mark Cuban, to greater or lesser degrees, and maybe also MacKenzie Scott and Melinda Gates.
Those who give their money to Republicans expect a return, which they get. Who is gonna give their money expecting no return just bc it's the right thing? Christians SAY it's what they do, but they don't, especially when they don't read the rest of the text.
Corbin. You describe the symptoms, not the problem. The reality is this - the 'right' has no inspiration, no vision, no beauty. They are retarded, as in they live far in the past, and live inside a historical propaganda bubble of self-deception and hubris. Their entire MO relies upon 'taking,' as has always been the case with empty vessels. Their ornamentation is self-righteous piety to a religious myth that puts god-like humans of white skin in charge of some god's Earth. This myth is biochemically addictive and malignantly terminal.
What fuels this taking is capitalism, the economic formula that engineers the artifacts of hyper-consumption via hyper-destructive extraction and ensuing pollution. What fuels capitalism? Oil, gas, technology, nukes and hydro-power, and their latest handmaiden - AI computing. There is nothing NEW about any of this - it is the well-paved road to Perdition, which all capitalists believe they will escape with the religious get-out-of-jail-free card or self-defined repentance. In order to infuse Stockholm Syndrome on the rest of us, they employ pernicious dominance and many forms of violence.
Rallies actually threaten them. Why else do they desire so savagely to eliminate them and hold those leaders hostage? Rallies are much more effective than tired and useless Party Politics, especially the Fascism-Lite of the modern neo-liberal Democratic party. I have never been in any party other the SWP decades ago. The reason people like Bernie, AOC, Crockett, Omar and others have agency is because they are ecological socialists who comprehend that capitalism is a parasitic dead end of ignominious death for much of the planet,
Stress within the populace will evince its own new path forward. As Harris often said, 'we are not going back.' The quantum field is massive when compared to the cancerous nihilism of Putin, TFG, Muck, Leo, Orban, et. al. But you must understand that no omelet will be made without a lot of broken eggs. The tragedy is that material and psychological addictions must fail before a desperate realization emerges that there are no off ramps to courage, strength, honor and reverence for life and Earth.
It appears to me that you are one important person among many to continue to create, via healthy stressors, ideas, strategies, observations, inventories, analyses, and energies so that many others will eschew depression and choose the power of humble cooperation. As e pluribus unum states quite clearly - from many, ONE.
They can do that because they have the time and money for it. I work 50+ hours a week and have family, am I supposed to quit my job to work on this year round infrastructure building? How would I pay my rent then? How am I meant to fund a media empire, rob a bank? Just start buying lotto tickets and hope. Like you're not wrong that it would work better, but you have to understand "stop going to rallies, found a media empire and work year round on recruiting people" is fundamentally no actionable advice". We've got to work with the time and resources we have.
I'm sorry to be so critical, but stating that things requiring massive funding and large amounts of full-time workers are more effective isn't helpful. It's not a new observation, it's the basic problem US progressive movements have been working against for the last decade
Relax, friend. Your part of this fight is to keep working and spread the word when you can. All the hundreds of thousands of people getting laid off from the government will be the ones with the "time" to work out the structure of the resistance. The national parks people are outdoorsy, nationwide, and f-ing passed. I expect great things to come from that group.
You can just talk to people. Be a good person who adds something positive to the world. We need people like that. (This is my opinion, of course, but strongly held.) Decency is contagious. Set an example.
You're absolutely right that we should all do that. But that's not how you changed the world. That's just a bottom line for human decency. That's not going to stop right when billionaires. For that we all need to be fighters in addition to being decent people who talk to each other and treat each other with respect.