The first step is to replace Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jefferies
I want the secret third thing: strongly worded letters!
Maybe the Iranians will be more forgiving if we deal with Trump.
I’m starting to think “affordability” is just weasely shit for little administrative fixes.
I want to start hearing about massive trust busting and I want to hear talk about the income crisis and dismantling all the tools and methods that employers bring to bear to drive wages down.
In other words, I want to hear some language that is undeniably leftist about changing the structure of the economy, not bland phrases for tinkering around the edges.
Centrists only use that word because it polls well. They stole it from Mamdami even though they hate him.
We have to get ahead and start actively making a case for socialism, or Republicans will keep having an edge in public debates.
The majority of Americans support most progressive goals. Even conservatives. Once you call it socialism they are against it because indoctrination is hard to shake.
Which is exactly why we need a full-throated defense of socialism.
How do you figure? People in general don’t listen to well thought out arguments, they’re mostly driven by pithy quips, buzzwords, and emotional arguments. And positioning ourselves on the defense just makes us look weak, and weakness is a poor emotional argument.
Progressive, socialist policies are extremely popular. Progressive, socialist terminology is extremely unpopular. What we actually need is a full-throated promotion of socialist policy without hobbling ourselves by using socialist language. Keep that shit in the cadre, meet the proletariat where they actually are.
How do you defend yourself against the true claim that your socialist policies are socialist? At some point, you have to stand your ground, no?
Anyway, the larger problem is the entire media landscape is hostile, which YouTube and podcasts are helping with.
If someone can correctly identify actual socialist policies as socialist, they’re probably already a socialist, so there’s nothing to defend. You can just innocently say “Oh is it? Huh, maybe those socialists are onto something then”.
The whole reason socialist terminology is poisoned is because the people have been told that “socialism” means the government owning everything, forcing you to live in commie blocks, and taking all your money to give to party insiders and freeloaders.
In either case, promoting the policies without the terminology is still the best course of action. The socialists will understand what you’re getting at, the masses will get to consider the policies without the baggage of propaganda.
You’re not a robot, you aren’t forced into the defensive by questions. Conversations are free response, you aren’t forced to follow a logical script. Logic is for coming to conclusions, not sharing them. That’s the job of rhetoric, and rhetoric relies on directing the conversation, not being directed. Persuasion is more important than reason here.
Bernie has been discussing and proposing affordability legislation long before Zohran was a politician.
For example -Consumer Affordability and Responsibility Enhancement (CARE) Act
Prescription Drug Affordability Act of 2015
College for all plan
Sure, but Bernie is also not in the centrist camp of the party with folks like Chuck Schumer or Hakeem Jeffries, so it doesn’t really contradict what they said.
While I agree, I’m not really sure how feasible that is in the current makeup? You’re talking about changes that need at least a two thirds majority are you not?
I said I want to start hearing about It. The Dem Party desperately needs to at least re-brand. We’re not going to get the reforms we need without arguing for them.
While I agree, I also know that is going to turn into “all they’ve done is talk about it” come the next election cycle.
Dems taking the majority has been great for the country short term, but I feel like it’s going to hurt the country in the mid-term as they are only going to be able to reel back the insanity, and not actually institute any “real” changes to point at two years from now.
Compare that to the alternative–we don’t propose a long-term goal and just make short-term changes that are barely noticeable and easily reversed.
Yas, preach
But…. Blue wave!?
For those reading these threads where there’s always a few doomer anti-hope comments: I urge you to call out and block these entirely unhelpful commenters. If you notice, those asking us to abandon hope, even though there is reason for it, do not pair any “criticism” with a call to action. In cases where that happens, that is helpful and not what I’m calling out. Regardless of why doomers are spreading gloom or what they think that will accomplish, paying them any attention can only ever lead to inaction, mental anguish, and helping fascist ideas gain traction across the world. Perhaps if enough of us block these users, they’ll start to feel like their anti-hope messaging campaigns are futile.
Do NOT lose hope. For Americans: contact your state representatives, get active with progressive political organizations, and do everything you can to affect change.
I would be cautious not to shut out opportunities to tell people there is a way to work for something better, but yes, particularly on the activism side, get busy participating with local progressive groups. We may not all have the money to buy our own politician, but working together a few hours and some helpful hands can go a long way.
It’s definitely started to feel like the doomers aren’t really here for dialog though.
I have him tagged as “echo chamber liberal.” I don’t remember the interaction that lead to that tag but I have seen him pop up several times since and every time he goes ahead and confirms it for me.
Way to stand up for the doomers. It “proves you right” that I’m all for an echo chamber even when I specifically say that criticism with a call to action is good. So we see which side you’re on. Thanks for confirmation of my tag for you also.
Doomers are an important part of reality. Bots and trolls not so much. It’s ok to be a doomer a lot of the time it’s a sober look at shit that people don’t have the will or capacity to see. I’ve been called a doomer so much that I bristle at the term because it’s a coping pajorative.
I disagree. Critics are important. Encouraging others to lose hope is a terrible and useless thing to do.
The audacity of telling me you have me tagged and not telling me what it is.
We cant just “have hope”. We have to do something about it to get it to exist. Hope is often used as an excuse to wait for the status quo to solve our problems with no effort and we are way past that. No one is coming to help any of us. Not the Democratic partyt leadership for sure, unless we MAKE them. The time for this sort of anger was really before the midterm, but now is second best.
I think the problem with our progressivism is its integrated passivity. It refuses to give itself permission to act on its own to forcefully to establish the future it wants. We beg and implre. We hold signs. We write letters and emails to those who have money in their pockets paid by our enemies. We try to shame the shameless, which only makes conservatives learn to be even more shameless. We count on some “decent people” to eventually appear and take charge somehow.
Lol. Good luck with that.
Do you fuckers understand that you can’t have affordability without accountability? How do you think we got to this point in the first place? From letting the billionaires fuck us over from every direction with impunity for decades.
They know that if they are successful in prosecution republicans for war crimes. Democrats would also be held accountable when they do war crimes
That would be prosecution, not persecution.
Schuck and Hakeem Doolittle aren’t going to do shit. That’s why they both need to go.
Do we wanna punish the pedophile President who ate babies he raped with Epstein on that island, inspired an insurrection, fucked our entire economy up, got us into another forever war, and ruined our reputation with our allies, undid tons of civil rights we gained in the last 50 years, or do we want eggs and gas to not cost so damn much?
We cannot have both?
Fuck me sideways, I’m so glad the Do-Nothing Democraps are in power now. I really really REALLY hope the more progressive wing can pressure the corpo dems into capitulation. If not, we are boned.
We’re already boned. We’ve been in a “Boned” state since the government started ignoring Due Process.
The only way to unbone us is to get organized, and get armed. Liberty can only exist when the government fears the populace.
Jeffries and Schumer only say affordability because Mamdami used it successfully of his winning mayoral campaign. Jeffries even used it to say that his meeting with the corrupt criminal Kushner had a meeting with him about affordability.
A good start would be releasing the Epstein files. It would take you about 10 minutes.
You forget there is more than one US President in the Epstein files.
Don’t think any one finds that a problem. Expose them all.
Political suicide means nothing if one dies a martyr
On the Accountability thing, I think there is a subtle thing to understand here. While Republicans had the majority during the last half of the Bide administration, dingbats like Jim Jordan were using the power of Congressional committees to investigate things that the Administratio did that they didn’t like. There was no real legal basis for the investigations, other than some officials did things that hurt Conservative’s fragile egos.
Those investigations has two goals: one was to demoralize Federal officials, but the other was to be able to turn around later and accuse the other side of wielding Government as a weapon when they are in power, because they understand it can motivate their side to vote.
We al need to understand that this is the real reason why some Democrats seem tepid on this accountability thing, it’s because they think it might rile up the deplorables. But, I think it is important to note the key difference between now and prior Presidencies: the Trump administration constantly violates the law. All. The. Time.
I think if Democrats limit their investigations to obvious violates of the law over the past 2 years, they will have more than enough to look at. Simply asking why US citizens keep getting detained by ICE ought to lead to some ICE administrators going to jail, shouldn’t it?
If Democratic leadership is truly serious about a both approach, I think they should first start heavily and only with Epstein files and only branch out from there as things get major coverage for 2 major reasons:
First is that there’s MAJOR bipartisan support for this and will ultimately lead to isolating certain officials and supporters, giving Democrats the moral high ground in other branching investigations IF they can land convictions and legislation. I’d like to hope that there are at least a few Republicans who are disgusted with their party as a whole (ie Thomas Massie) and are being backed into a corner with campaign finances, and this could free a few votes for later bills or a Senate convictions/removals.
Secondly, i have zero doubt those investigations will lead to certain billionaires being questioned and potentially lead to actual trials and accountability. And if progressives play their questions right, could lead to a public outcry for more campaign finance AND News coverage reform.
Meanwhile, they should pass single issue, high polling bills like tariff reform and ending the Iran conflict. Then once some dust settles a bit and there’s the inevitable Epstein tie-in, publicly investigate corporate pricing/inflation.
You know thought out arguments like this don’t help the media get more clicks.
Committee chairs for the next session of congress are already promising prosecutions.
If Schumer and Jeffries are put back in leadership roles you can just expect more of democrats fondling trumps Nazi pedophile nuts.
I don’t know… that starts to look an awful lot like work.
Exactly, but noticed how to two guys who want to lead the party only want to focus on affordability. With Trumps veto power it up hill battle. They definitely should still fight it. But if we don’t address the accountability part that they do have the power to address. Then we have no rule of law and Trump and co, and those in the shadows will see that they can do whatever the hell they want without consequences.
Hungarian here, our current leaders do both.
And I mean they are just doing the bare fucking minimum, sometimes badly, and even that is a major breath of fresh air compared to the likes of Biden or Merz
As some have already pointed out, some of these things are very much linked.
If you get accountability for launching a war on Iran because donnie is a goddamned idiot that hates Obama so much, well, that is related to affordability. Gas/diesel shot way up as a result, and that impacts the price of everything.
Same for the accountability of donnie throwing tariffs on everything.
More importantly, you don’t fix affordability, until you unwind corruption. That’s the Mandate Dems were elected on, breaking corruption’s death grip on the economy. If they fail to deal with the corruption, affordability isn’t going to get better.
And for fuck’s sake, as part of that own the anti-data center issue. It’s appalling to have that giant activating winner of an issue just hanging out there and no one in politics claiming it.
Do you want to afford your energy and not have your home that you can’t afford to leave become a living hell? Well let’s stop these assholes who have been shoveling money at Trump’s vanity projects from having free reign to do literally anything they want without accountability.
