Sweeping Democratic victories in off-year elections seem to be foreshadowing a very good midterms for the party, and one expert believes it’s even bigger than that.
“This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to fundamentally transform legislative power,” Heather Williams, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC), which focuses on electing Democrats to statehouses, told Mother Jones.
I’ll believe nothing until I see it. I’ll be voting Democrat.
Also be on the lookout for Republicans in sheep’s clothes running for local elections. You can easily tell them apart but I won’t say how. Just read the pamphlet or if they fucked up and you didn’t get one go to the website and read about the candidates. For local I’ve been picking people by their background. For example for superintendent for the school district pick a teacher. For fire fighters pick a firefighter. For other things I’ve picked engineers and science background candidates. We gotta get rid of the retarded politicians and the carrier politicians that just waste our tax money on defense and military stuff.
They have this chance, yes. I hope they’re able to capitalize on it. But, I know Schumer and the geriatric democrats have an uncanny way of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
And they’ll bust it with their tried and tested method for failure: trying to court the right by moving right and abandoning leftist causes.
abandoning leftist causes
Actively opposing leftist causes
Dems put more effort into opposing Mamdani than they did into prosecuting Trump over J6 💀
They need to give us something to fight for first. The system is not currently supporting and nourishing it’s children. Why on earth would we trust people to help that can’t even fully recognise a genocide? How do we trust them to give us healthcare? It’s an insult to the intelligence of the American people.
Ahhh yes. Why fight against evil if all my boxes aren’t ticked. Enjoy 100 years of fascism.
Just because I go out of my way to vote, doesn’t mean I expect others to when the results are against them either way. Bullying people won’t get you any further to what is needed. Aim it at the politicians, they more than deserve it. If you give people something to show up for, anti corruption and anti genocide, they’ll show up, just like they did for Mandami.
Narrator: But they won’t.
If there’s a way, no matter how small, for the Dems to squander this opportunity and wrestle defeat from the jaws of victory, they will leave no bland page of the most moderate and uninspiring speech unread to a near empty chamber.
My thoughts exactly. I can’t wait to see the controlled opposition “accidentally” fumble a guaranteed win.
Schumer’s and Jefferies are currently working directly against Democrats abilities to storm into a majority. If you only have the ability to lead in fair weather and favorable winds, you don’t have the ability to lead.
These two in particular are doing material damage to Democrats abilities to barnstormer November.
Hmmm, I wonder if Trump will use executive orders to circumvent congress completely, and the Supremes will back him up per Bezos instructions?
Nah, that’s crazy, I’m just paranoid.
p.s. Senate will continue ignoring actual law and insist on following Senate rules (not law; can be changed at any time with simple majority vote) per cloture to avoid the “filibuster”; this blatantly unconstitutional “rule” was magically created to prevent another New Deal
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lol. The great blue tsunami? Probably more like great blue tear splash. Never underestimate their ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. It’s by design.
I’ve heard that the guy leading the Democratic Party right now has been pushing for a 50 state approach as well as pushing for all levels of government, even state legislatures. Putting more money into state parties as well. Seems like the right approach at least.
The last guy who had that idea got absolutely railroaded for showing enthusiasm during a stump speech.
He was right, though.
Well yes, but that wasn’t enough to save him once the powers that be decided they wanted him gone.
What’s your point though? He’s was right, the party moved on and that was clearly a mistake. Now it seems like they’re recognizing that mistake and doing something about it.
That is certainly a better start than years past where they simply ignored everything except top level offices. Including their voters.
But it still won’t help anything if they try to run the most focused group tested, middle-of-the-road, oligarch approved, bland candidates. Mamdani and others are showing another path. But so far, local and national Democrats have always seemed to want to fight their kind.
I think it’s important to remember that different parts of the country require different types of candidates. Dems flipped out about Manchin, but he was the only Democrats would get elected in the region.
if they try to run the most focused group tested, middle-of-the-road, oligarch approved, bland candidates. Mamdani and others are showing another path.
We should not care who they try to run, and instead show up in the primaries to dictate to them who we choose.
Wether we should or shouldn’t doesn’t matter since the last election showed people will either stay home or defect if Dems run another Corpo shilling milquetoast do nothing right of center candidate.
I’ll still vote for them just to spite the Fascist Right Cunts but I certainly won’t like it and I will certainly bitch about it.
Just be aware that you’re not bitching into a vacuum. Think about the consequences.
I do think there’s room to bitch, but it’s important to be smart about it.
And yeah, let’s win some primaries. I’m not compromising in the primaries. And I’m not going to be fooled by a run slightly left to be followed by a run towards center-right.
I agree. Though one addendum. showing up in the primaries is good, but it’s not going to solve bad candidates. We need to start running ourselves. Rebuilding state parties ourselves. And telling the disastrous national party to get fucked.
That sort of concentrated power always results in conceitedness and corruption.
I don’t understand why people are so hot on Mamdani. His vote totals were actually significantly lower than most recent Democrat nominees in this primarily Democratic city.
Because according to conventional wisdom. People like him weren’t supposed to be able to win.
According to progressive wisdom he should be able to win elsewhere but even in blue Minneapolis the same kind of progressive lost.
It’s not a silver bullet and the person replying above you that it takes all kinds is entirely right. I like mamdani but there’s not a shot in hell he’d win my city.
But hey, I’m sure more purity tests will help progressives as always.
I’m an anarchist. Honestly, I don’t believe that there should be anyone with more power than a mayor. And that the mayor of New York has too much power already. But that’s neither here nor there.
Everyone, every group of people is different. They’re is no magic bullet. No one size fits all. My city is also to ignorant and insular for a similar candidate to win. Currently. But it doesn’t always have to be that way.
Why are you acting like this wasn’t a race between democrats though? The Republican canidate and any other 3rd party canidates had no chance.
In the primary Mamdani beat all the other democrats. Then for the general the run of the mill corporate democrat ran independent and still lost.
It’s essentially a race showing us the type of democrats proffered by democratic voters
Even if this were true–which I am skeptical that it is–we cannot wrest our republic from the brink by winning every election by wide margins. If we can’t find a way to reconcile the degree to which we can’t agree on a basic set of facts and institute government that is responsive to the needs of the people, then the seemingly impending authoritarian age will come to pass.
Only if progressives throw their hats into the primaries in 2026.
I’ve seen a disturbing lack of progressives readying up to kick out establishment dems, just like every year.
Dems broke their spirit.
MAGA took over the republicans without bitching that it was hopeless.
The Tea Party gave Repubs the courage to be the racist Christofascists they already were, the left side of American politics is far less homogeneous.
The Tea Party and MAGA also had billionaire funding.
Yah this. The idea that an organic, grassroots movement can overcome current oligarch control over media and politics is nonsense. Ever since Citizens United and all the prior consolidations of power (Nixon, Gingrich, Patriot Act, etc.), there is no fighting back for the common man, even en masse. There are protests as large as 14M people and it had no effect on politicians, revolution should have already happened, but politicians are ignoring the call. They are hell bent on answering only to Billionaires. I really think there’s only one solution left and it’s right here in a quote from JFK: “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
JFK has a lot to teach us about how politicians should be treated.
A wide ranging peaceful protest movement with specific legislative goals such as the Civil Rights Act.
And when that doesn’t work, it’s time to touch grass. Lots of grassy knolls are available if people are motivated.
MAGA did not try to upend the pro-buisness nature of the Republican party. MAGA and old school republicans serve the same masters.
Progressive reformers have a much steeper hill to climb, as it would require a near-total destruction of the Democratic Party status quo in order to effect meaningful change.
Both D and R politicians are deeply addicted to dark money donations; we have legalized bribery and corruption. Ending this addiction, even in one party, is not a small, simple act- it is a revolution.
A revolution sounds pretty damn good right about now.
Yep. All it ever is is excuses.
We are literally surrounded by ignorant Nazis raging for the machine who voted for a pedofile con man 3 times….don’t hold your breath
I gotta ask, like what’s the plan even if there is a big blue wave? The current dream scenario it seems is just a centre-right single party state where the Republicans poof into thin air and leave just the Democrats. Your guys’ country needs more parties
Your guys’ country needs more parties
We need significant changes to our voting systems to make a multi-party system viable. As it is stands now, it basically devolves into a 2-party system because a 3rd party will just end up dividing the votes of one side and helping the other end.
There are several voting schemes that would make more parties viable. Unfortunately, it’s a catch-22 because the people who can enact such a change are disincentivized from doing so because they benefit from the current paradigm.
/I am using “multi” here to mean more than 2
The last time the Democrats won control of Congress, they tried to pass a very large electoral reform law.
This bill bans partisan gerrymandering, requires Congressional constituency lines to be drawn by independent boundary commissions, introduces new limits on campaign finance, requires polls to be open for at least two weeks, introduces an automatic voter registration scheme, makes the final day of voting a federal holiday, expands postal voting, makes obstructing voter registration a federal crime, restores voting rights to felons when they leave prison, bans lying to voters about when or where to vote, introduces public financing of elections, limits the amount of money that political parties can spend on an election, requires candidates for president or vice-president to disclose their tax returns, imposes a code of ethics on the Supreme Court, and bans companies from making big donations to inaugural committees.
This bill did not pass because the Senate was evenly divided and the Democrats suffered a backbench rebellion from two “centrist” senators.
As is tradition.
This bill did not pass because the Senate was evenly divided and the Democrats suffered a backbench rebellion from two “centrist” senators.
There’s a reasonable suspicion the Democrats only advance these bills proposing real change when they already know they have those two “rebels” lined up to block it. That way they keep the voters coming back for another try, while looking after the interests of those who pay them.
I’m pretty sure if that were the case then someone would have blown the whistle on this several years ago. These people employ staffers, many of whom are very ideologically dedicated to the progressive cause, and would not hesitate to become a person familiar with the manner who agreed to an interview on condition of anonymity. In fact, this is probably where 90% of Congress leaks come from.
Democrats are an uncertainty while Republicans are a certainty to vote against this kind of reform. To me the solution is clear, remove the certainty, get so many DNC in there that expulsion becomes viable without handing the reigns over to Rs.
The Democrats could mobilize their base (not just the voters, but the unions and civil society orgs and universities and the like) and actually implement some party discipline by going after rogue party members that stand in the way of the agenda.
Senators have homes. They have investments. They have donors. They have families. All are points of leverage.
But they won’t, because that’s their job. The whole reason those “”“centrists”“” are in the party is to discipline the left flank and stop them from hurting the money’s feelings, disciplining their right flank would defeat the purpose.
The plan is to create a de facto one-party state where Republicans consistently get around 20-30% of the vote.
To stay in power, the ruling party needs the opposition to be too weak to attempt a takeover, but too strong to be wiped out. By doing this, the “I’m not [opposition]” can remain the default messaging.
Historically, when a party is defeated electorally over and over again, its members either form a new party or they rebel against leadership and the party lurches left or right in the direction of the voters. This happened to the Republican Party after they lost five presidential elections in a row (four of which were won by Franklin Roosevelt). The next Republican president in office was Dwight Eisenhower, who by today’s standards would be a moderate liberal.
You can also see it happen in other countries. After being stuck on the left side of the room for 14 years the British Labour Party elected a… moderate conservative as leader and then subsequently won the next election.
Generally speaking, when a party keeps losing elections over and over again, picking a more extreme candidate is usually catastrophic to their electoral chances—see what happened in Canada and Australia.
Before anyone comments with objections or observations of this dynamic in modern American politics, do note that no party has lost 3 elections in a row in five decades.
They have them, they just don’t vote them. The big brain argument is “because nobody does”.
Because the current system is setup to exclude third party voters, mathematically the FPTP system will result in a two party duopoly. And we’ve seen time and time again that the spoiler effect reduces votes to the party more similar to the third party.
So yeah, unless you get all the people to dedicate to a third party blowout, it is a waste. If an incumbent president didn’t have enough influence to break the duopoly by going third party, do you really think it’s ever going to happen? Particularly without a huge movement of said third party?
Pragmatically speaking, voting third party only serves to help the people you disagree with more.
The same argument applies in every other voting system and that is simply not how it works. If you never vote what you actually want you will never get what you actually want. Saying all need to change at once is nonsense, a gradual shift is more than enough. But people argue exactly like that and so never vote what they want, that is the core issue. Other voting systems still see few % parties get nothing and the argument people use to not vote them is exactly the same. The has to be some cutoff below which you get nothing and there is no way to prevent that in a real system with integer numbers.
The same argument applies in every other voting system
It literally does not, there are ranked voting and instant runoff systems where it doesn’t apply.
No one but me, of course. I expect to vote third party (or for candidates considered a traitor to both big parties) until I’m dead.
Vote for me. My campaign slogan is “Bacon”.
No further questions please! Elect me! Bacon.
Have you filed for write-in eligibility in my state?
This is the chance for Dems to once again wrestle defeat from the jaws of victory.
We need a better party. Dems are centrists; we need a progressive. One who won’t olive branch the traitor party.
however, the government favors just the republicans and the democrats. if the us went for a parliamentary system (with an executive president, rather than a president and a prime minister), we would have a lot more options, and the progressives would win a bit more. seriously!
No you don’t. You’ll just split the vote.
Americans are too stupid to collectively be aware of the problem
Don’t fuck this up.
Don’t worry they won’t let another party be formed.
how do you think we’re gonna do that?
Voters need to stop voting for the lesser evil.
I won’t hold my breath.
We need less Republicans, if you’ve got an actual plan to do that then great, if you don’t then step out of the way and let us elect the progressive DNC representatives.
Democrats will just go more right in response
That happened in Canada’s federal election. Our Conservative party was acting like Trumpists, so people flocked to the Liberal party, our left-ish parties collapsed, and the Liberals took a big step right.
Just like the labour party in the UK
