There is a lot of misinformation here about the DSA I need to address. I’m a DSA member here in California and have been for the past year and yes, we are socialists, not social democrats. Our ultimate goal is the collective, democratic ownership of the means of production by the workers instead of the capitalists. Although our long term goal is socialism, under the current capitalist system we strive to make things as equitable as possible.
We tend to be a collective of leftists that are unified under important issues like Black Lives Matter, Defund the Police (yes, we are still saying this), Medicare for All, Abolish ICE, Green New Deal, Tuition-Free College, etc. so we all have different priorities, but we are all anti-capitalist and want actual change in this country, not just whatever scraps liberals want to give us.
We have spent a lot of time this year organizing for DSA-endorsed Democratic candidates, protesting the fascism of the Trump administration, and phonebanking and canvassing for candidates and issues. Socialism has been growing more and more support among younger people and it’s caused a huge explosion of new members over the past 5 years or so. We plan on growing our presence in the Democratic Party and growing our power and numbers until the Dems have no reason but to listen to us.
The establishment centrists will always try to blame us for their losses, but the fact is that candidates who ran on progressive issues won while the ones who ran away from them lost. If the Dems want to continue to blame us for their failures and run to the right and their Repub buddies, we will make them see the error of their ways.
Yep, and if the people you label as “shitty” amount to more than 50% of the population plus 1, you’re dead in the water before you start and nothing you want to accomplish will ever happen.
I care about my 401K, my savings, the value of my home. I care about the impact of public policy on those things, and I’m going to think about them as I evaluate public policy. If you think that makes me shitty, I don’t think you’re ever getting to 50% + 1.
I really like AOC. She’s a very talented politician, seriously. In a world where freshman House members struggle to make their names known and work the phone all day struggling to meet their party’s fundraising goals, she’s built a brand and is a fundraising powerhouse. But talent is not experience, and sometimes she makes rookie errors.
She’s a great house rep. She represents her very small district and she only has to get to 50% + 1 among her neighbors. If you’re a house rep and you are in a very deep blue district, you can hold positions well left of center and still get to 50% + 1 of your constituency. Ditto for Louie Gohmert and Jim Jordan and far right positions.
House of Representative is a career choice for many politicians, some of them get voted in young and keep the job in their district their entire lives, advancing their far left or right policy positions as much as they can. AOC isn’t the first young Congressperson that wanted to remake the country, and she won’t be the last.
But if she wants a different career trajectory, Senator, Governor, President, she’ll probably have to moderate her positions to reach 50% + 1 of that broader population. And the broader the group, the more she’ll need to moderate, assuming she continues to run for elected office. I’m not implying she might quit politics, she might have a high level position in a Democratic administration or work as a political consultant.
BlockquoteIf your definition of “Far Left” is “people who strongly support BLM”, then, yes, you’re talking about the vast majority of Black voters, as well as a large majority of young voters.
This. The Biden campaign built its strategy around appealing to so-called ‘moderate’ Republicans and they got exactly what they wanted; enough pearl clutching suburbanites willing to hold their nose and vote Biden while voting GOP straight down the rest of the ticket. Looking at you, Maine. You know how the GOP managed a competitive race with one of objectively WORST candidates ever? They pushed unapologetically for their positions using every possible means and cultivated a loyal and dedicated voter base that values results rather than platitudes. They did manage to grow their base, in the face of the worst pandemic the country has seen since 1918 and the worst economic situation since at least 2008, likely the Great Depression. You have to stand for something. Now, I think what the GOP stands for these days is repugnant, but you’d be a fool not to evaluate and when necessary adopt their methods. You’re not going to inspire and motivate people with a 5% reduction in healthcare costs and federal subsidies for airport expansions. You’re just not. You think the rhetoric of BLM and defunding the police cost us some races? We would win absolutely nothing without the votes of black women and men who, once again, carried us over the finish line. Betray our principles and betray them again and see what happens… they sure as hell weren’t put off by BLM or defunding the police rhetoric.
Yeah so? The whole thing about FB and Twitter is sharing someone else stuff. It starts with the kremlin, and works it’s way out. Obviously they only post a few hundred thousand things, a tiny %, they rely upon sharing.
They put a new rule in P&E “stop accusing posters of being russian bots”- even tho I realy, really doubt we ever had any (one banned self-proclaimed bernie support was a maybe). But that doesnt mean a poster might not read Russian disinformation and pass it on here, even if they got it third hand.
Yep, the Democrats have been playing defense instead of playing offense for too long, only reacting to whatever the Republicans throw at them instead of trying to convince people that their positions are best. And that’s because the party these days doesn’t have much of an identity outside of being Not Republicans, and that’s not enough for a lot of people.
Biden would have lost if he wasn’t running against Trump, and that is up to the failure of the party to present a compelling vision other than “Get rid of Trump”
Aren’t all districts the same population size (roughly)? Does geographic size matter?
She beat a very powerful incumbent to win her seat. Same party but he was a centrist.
Just because you are in a reliably blue/red district doesn’t mean your policies and actions can’t get you into trouble with your constituents and see you primaried and the people there care about their homes and savings and 401k’s too.
No she doesn’t. Unless you buy that politicians represent dirt and not people. AOC’s District is 706k people more or less and that’s just about around the average for congressional districts. It’s 50% bigger than Wyoming’s at-large district. She also does far far better than 50% +1.
No, that is not what most people meant- they mean to cut the fat and military toys out of the police budget and get some community helpers out there instead. Now, dont get me wrong- “defund the police” is one of the most idiotic slogans ever.
But since neither Pelosi nor Biden nor Harris nor Schumer subscriber to the “defend the police” movement, why shoudl it hurt them in the elections? No democratic party leader subscribed to that.
That is a op-ed guest piece in the NYT, it is not their policy , nor is that writer any sort of leader of the Democratic party. In fact I cant even see that she is even a member of our party.
Sam is sort of right. “Defund the police” originally meant “abolish the police,” and it was a position held by a vanishingly small minority of activists, usually the hardcore anarchists. After George Floyd, some progressives who want to go further than the same old police reforms that haven’t done any good sought a new soundbite. They came across “defund the police”, probably at marches, and adopted it, even though it didn’t really get across what they were going for.
Fox News et al found the most uncharitable, dishonest reading of the situation possible, and here we are: they claim that Biden wants to abolish the police, because he didn’t outright condemn some of the deep changes to policing that were advocated by some other people who sometimes used “defund the police” to describe those changes.
Yes, some folks want abolition. They used to be the only ones saying, “Defund the police.” Most folks who use that saying, now, don’t believe in police abolition.
They just switched to dog whistling as famously told by Lee Atwater in an infamous interview:
(WARNING: for quote below for a lot of use of the word “n*****”. It is a direct quote from an infamous interview so I left it as is because it should shock you. I put spoiler tags on if you’d rather not read it…Mods: If not ok please let me know and/or fix it.)
> You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”SOURCE
No, Defund the Police always meant taking money away from police departments and reallocating it to prevention services and improving the community. It always meant to decrease the power and funding of police departments. Some of us do believe in Abolish the Police, and defunding as a start to that, but they are a part of the Defund movement too.
We have always been very clear about what we mean when we say Defund the Police, it’s just that we have little control over how the enemy negatively spins it.