House Democratic lawmakers reportedly used a closed-door meeting earlier this week to vent their frustrations with progressive advocacy groups that have been driving constituent calls and pressuring the party to act like a genuine opposition force in the face of the Trump administration’s authoritarian assault on federal agencies and key programs.
“Forcing recorded votes is possible. Frequent quorum calls are possible. A wide variety of dilatory motions are possible. In short, harassing the majority is possible. If they think it’s a bad idea, say so. If they say it’s not possible, they’re lying.”
I like how politicians voting is considered a time out. It’s their job, jfc.
“But if our votes are recorded, our voters corporate donors will know we voted against them!”
Right? This is about providing political cover to centrists who take money from the same oligarchs as conservatives. They just want to pretend they are on our side.
They actually can’t force votes though, so we’d be getting the same votes and we already knew whenever Republicans stepped out from the ranks such as the Hegseth confirmation where 3 of them abstained but he got appointed anyways. Recorded Votes doesn’t stop the Trump admin. The Dems are effectively powerless without 13 Ind + Gop to impeach and remove him or his cabinet members or corrupt federal judges.
Leeja is cool but her opinion was that they’re running their tiktok accounts wrong and they were born in the wrong year.
What specifically would YOU do to stop what the Trump admin is doing?
Simultaneously,
Wow I can’t believe those fake congresspersons on that parody news site would say that. Thank you for bringing this into real political discussions. /s
Progressives need to start their own party. The establishment DNC is so entrenched with big donors and lobbyists that it is unable to serve the people. Their balancing act of appeasing both the right and the left is just serving to alienate everyone because the final policies get so diluted. They have become too stuck in the quagmire of their own doing. I don’t see the DNC being able to change any time soon and through their inaction, will only enable more devastation of the country.
The new Progressive party should align with the DNC as the opposition during this administration but simultaneously run more like minded candidates in the next elections with their own separate fundraising campaigns. That’s the only hope I have for meaningful change to happen.
There’s a free app called 5 calls. It helps you to call your representative with a script. Progressives need to get on this. I’m aware it’s a pain, but the script makes it a lot easier especially when you get an answering machine instead of a person.
It’s rather naive to think that phone calls will change anyone’s mind in office. Money speaks, not phone calls.
It’s rather naive to throw out centuries of political theory because you can’t be bothered to write / call / show up.
https://act.represent.us/sign/does-calling-congress-really-work
In fact the only thing they pay attention to more than calls is people physically showing to their offices.
The problem is you get the NDP/Liberal vs. Conservative effect when you do this. If you have 30% of the population vote for your Leftie, and 30% vote for the other Leftie, in a given congressional district, the Republican can win with 31%, despite 60% voting against the Republican. We need RCV before we can do this, and people need to understand that they MUST put the other party as choice 2 or we are back to ending up with a Republican.
That is indeed a problem that needs to be resolved, and likely through ranked choice voting. But as a country, we tend to focus too much on the presidential election. Change will have to start in the congressional elections - both at federal and state levels. The issue of votes splitting will be a lesser issue in these elections except in a few large districts. That will also be where smaller fundraising campaigns would go further.
Change starts at the dog catcher. That’s how the maga morons did it. They ran for every single down ballot race, all the way to the bottom.
The thing you’re missing is that you’ll tap into a whole new category of voters that have never had anyone to vote for before.
Ding. Both major parties have abandoned the working class, and a whole lot of people have given up on the system as a whole. Give a real choice that has a chance and people will turn up. But that means the politics-as-sports folks need to hang up their team colors, and that’s only going to happen by spreading class consciousness. No war but class war.
The Democratic party has just officially morphed into the Republican party of 30 years ago. They trotted out the Cheney’s ffs.
Not like it matters. We’re not voting our way out of this situation, the fascists won’t let anyone take power back now that they have it. It’s revolution or a technofeudal hellscape.
The DNC leadership are elected by people who are elected by us. Almost no one votes in those elections… Probably no one even knows they exist. But a well timed strategy of getting like 50 progressives to show up to each election and vote for progressive leadership is all it would take to replace every liberal in the party leadership with progressives… No reason to leave 2 conservative parties intact
I’d start by looking up your local Dems party. Most towns and counties have their own Dem party who’s job it is to get Dems elected locally. They themselves are elected by (registered) Dems in that town or county. They’ll know who runs your state party (also elected by Dems in your state), and who from your state gets to vote for DNC (national) leadership. They’ll also probably know how many people show up for these elections (it’s usually like 10 people!) Then it’s just a matter of organizing enough progressives to take over these local party positions and then take over the DNC… but, the good news is, progressives just took over the party leadership! At least the new Chair is relatively progressive, and was supported by Our Revolution.
On the one hand, it’s super annoying that a small group of people makes all the decisions, but on the other hand, they are the people who show up month after month. You’ll probably need to show up too, get to know who is progressive and who’s a shill. Then make moves to replace the shills with progressives.
In Nashua, NH (the second biggest “city” in NH) we were able to completely replace the city Dems leadership with only 50 progressives showing up to vote
What we really need is a national org like Our Revolution or Move On or whoever, to make a concerted effort to plan out the takeover of every town/county/state Dems in every state. Each state should have a paid director plus staff who can map out all the leadership of all the smaller Dems parties in that state, rally progressive voters, and take the state party for progressives, town by town and then the state party all together.
“In 2025, the DNC Chair election will be held on February 1. The chair will be elected by the 448 active National Committee members, consisting of 200 elected members from state parties, as well as elected officials, constituency representatives, and at-large members.”
https://indivisible.org/resource/dnc-chair-race-explained
so a 200 person minority of the voters are people elected … somehow… (how do pick which state people get a votes) presumably in a way that forwards the publics wishes, not that they ever do that-- and the other 248 are dnc insiders. I dont see how progressives can maneuver to a win with those constraints.
The DNC Chair, vice chair, treasurer, etc
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_National_Committee#Current_leadership
The US needs a left-wing Party.
This has been half a century of Fascists vs neoliberals, center-right “free to be LGBTQ as you die of poverty in the gutter” vs so far right we’re building Concentration camps.
Unfortunately our people have been poorly educated by design as well as brainwashed into believing profit comes before humanity. " Herp derp Anything less is socialism and therefore evil!"
This is only “freedom” for the rich to trample the poor. Freedom without social responsibility is a rampage. We need revolution, revolution that does far more to Wall Street than merely occupy it , or we need to accept living in hell until the capitalists destroy the climate enough to destroy civilization all together.
Don’t worry, just a few more decades of the same at most for nature to do what we’re failing to. This will end within a human lifespan, the choice is if it will be with or without a habitable planet for Humans.
This isnt the usual ebbs and flows of history, There is a very literal deadline of humanity’s own greedy making.
Don’t worry, just a few more decades of the same at most for nature to do what we’re failing to. This will end within a human lifespan, the choice is if it will be with or without a habitable planet for Humans.
That’s the plan. That’s why billionaires are buying up properties in places that are currently too cold and remote for masses of people to want to live there (Montana, Greenland, etc).
They know climate change is real and it is 100% reflected in Homeowners insurance rates in FL and other high risk places. I’m fairly certain that it’s not the leftist types that get into starting insurance companies.
Also, the whole Covid thing… I am pretty sure there was a concerted effort that would cull our numbers a bit.
So yea, we’re all going to die probably — unless you’re rich enough to afford to move to somewhere that will have a more hospitable climate when we cross the 3 degrees Celsius threshold next year.
So the Republicans can act like an opposition party but they can’t? Have they had their heads buried since the beginning of Obama’s term? Or is this their snide way of confirming complicity?
The rich want to end democracy. They dont want to stop Muskler.
And almost everyone in Congress and the Senate is rich.
I said this in /r/law and was told that my level of cynicism is unrealistic and I’m arguing in bad faith
The democrats were this ineffective during the GWB era as well. Then after America gets sick of Republicans because their policy is terrible and predictably causes calamities of varying magnitudes, only the people who didn’t go along for the ride with the Republicans thrive politically afterwards.
For instance, one of Obama’s main draws in the 2008 primaries was the dude wasn’t drawn into being pro-Iraq invasion.
The feeble wimps will all be seen as such if this era ever ends, and the public will turn to whomever consistently opposed the petard throwing before it hoists the one who threw it.
