Left-leaning challengers in the Rust belt are throwing chaos into a divided party struggling to rebuild after Trump’s win
From Detroit to Pennsylvania to Buffalo, New York, and here in Ohio, insurgent, progressive Democrats are defeating their long-established colleagues in dozens of school board, city council and mayoral races, throwing the already-divided national party into chaos, even as polls indicate it stands to potentially benefit at next year’s midterm elections due to the Trump administration’s divisive policies.
In Lancaster, Pennsylvania, one of seven swing states whose voters in recent years have decided the country’s presidential election, 37-year-old Jaime Arroyo was elected mayor on 4 November, becoming the first Latino mayor in the city’s 295-year history. In La Crosse, Wisconsin, another swing state, Shaundel Washington-Spivey, the city’s first Black and out gay mayor, beat a fellow Democratic party candidate with extensive local government experience last April.
Candidates such as Turner-Sloss, Arroyo and Washington-Spivey are campaigning on combating rising housing costs and providing better public transit infrastructure at a time when affordability issues and federal government policies are driving many working families into crisis.
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We’d have had one fewer senator organizing the Dem capitulation caucus. We’d have also had one fewer senator capitulating to Trump in March. Maybe, just maybe, someone willing to fucking do anything about Trump would’ve been in office. Also if he was replaced in, say, 2019 there would have been one fewer pro-genocide reactionary voting to give Israel everything it wants.
*Delayed. It would’ve been delayed, just as it was in 2020, because that’s the thing: Democrats don’t fucking do anything. Their favorite excuse is the filibuster, but they can just get rid of it. It’s literally that simple. Whether this is incompetence or malice (though it’s obviously the latter), the Democratic establishment needs to go before anything resembling progress can happen. You’ll never get fewer Republicans if their competition is Joe “nothing will fundamentally change” Biden or Kamala “most lethal army in the world” Harris. Trump is the result of 50 years of Democrats gargling corporate balls is Trump, and you’ll never get rid of Trump if you don’t do something about the corporate balls.
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And is that because they’re terrible at winning or because they don’t want to win? Take your pick. Either way they need to go.
And they used that opportunity to pass checks notes Romneycare. So productive.
If they’ve spent decades fighting that “battle” and this is the result, maybe they’re not actually fighting at all.
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Sure, fuck the DNC and this is why.
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Yes, but that’s an irresponsibly low bar. Aim higher.
Schumer hasn’t done nearly enough to oppose Trump and spends more effort supporting genocide and opposing his own party. Like why the fuck was he siding with Trump against Mamdani?
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Aiming low also doesn’t accomplish anything if the candidate doesn’t win, and we’ve seen too many candidates lose after moving to the right.
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Harris. She started out somewhat progressive and was leading in the polls, and then she started campaigning with Liz Cheney and focus was on support from CEOs. I’m fairly sure that turn to the right contributed to her loss.
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She wasn’t extreme radical left, and went out of her way to appeal to the right. She refused to embrace even widely supported ideas like Medicare for All or condemning genocide. Mamdani, on the other hand, is unapologetically left, and won in a landslide.
Americans support far more progressive policies than many people believe, including themselves. Focus on policies that will help regular people, instead of the billionaires, and you will win.