Campaign Finance Reform is the single issue from which ALL other issues flow. Manipulating campaign financing is what causes everything bad in government. All lobbying, all promises, are bought and paid for with “campaign donations.” It is legal bribery, but bribery just the same.
Presidential Campaigns should be Federally funded, limited to 90-120 days, and tightly regulated in terms of appearances and speech. This is an audition and an interview process for the president of the country, and the process should filter for the very best and most qualified candidates, not the most outrageous. If someone lies, over promises, abuses the other candidates or anyone else, etc. they can, and will, be disqualified from running. It’s not a right to run, it’s a privilege, and that privilege can be rescinded for bad behavior.
You’ve just described exactly why the Democratic party lost touch with normal people. They couldn’t resist wealthy donors. Or so says Bernie Sanders all the goddammed time.
Y’all. Stop fucking fooling yourselves. Don’t let others strongman our county into the ground by convincing you to gobble down whatever rancid dick a political party throws at you.
You want the Dems to win? People under 35 should primary every fucking member of Congress. Boomers did this to is, and they’ll keep doing this to us. Fuck them.
Don’t let others strongman our county into the ground by convincing you to gobble down whatever rancid dick a political party throws at you.
…
We vote in primaries to avoid that.
I was trying to get people to vote in primaries, you are telling them to give up on the party and depressed primary turnout is how we get stuck with that shit in the general.
Like, if your honest about what you want, you’re literally working against it right now.
Prior to 2012, I also believed that. Please keep in mind that the Democratic abuse of Superdelegates in 2016 to screw Bernie was so egregious that they had to reform their system to curb their egos. Some. Now they only have a 15% party leadership stake. So sanguine. So benevolent.
Many states also have closed primaries specifically to keep the party entrenched. Like where I vote, the GOP set it up generations ago, and guess which party has in recent years not lost sleep over it? Certainly not enough to bother changing it.
Primaries are the same sham as local elections with no primary in heavily single-party constituencies. Which is that the entrenched party decides who can run under their brand sure to collect people who vote down the line, and for anyone else, even lifelong registered members of that party, to run as independents. Local elections matter. So do statewide seats. And both parties want nothing more than to be in power, not to represent you.
Thinking that the other party will somehow fix what you don’t like is how we have gotten here and been here since the 90s. Voting only to vote against someone else lets the slime disenfranchise you when you think it hasn’t. Relying on a party to maybe, hopefully, let your vote go to who they decide, isn’t democracy, and it doesn’t defend or uphold democratic values. Otherwise maybe we would have something a bit more coherent than Schumer’s strongly worded letters and Newsom being cautious as a lawyer “letting” one comms person tweet sass a few times for the media traction.
Maybe I didn’t make myself clear:
Fuck both these parties and everyone involved. Unseat them all. Fuck both the parties, they ain’t done shit but for themselves.
The treatment of Bernie in the 2016 primary also made me lose faith in our form of flawed Democracy. Living in a red state, primaries are my only chance to have any effect on the national Democratic Party and 2016 made it obvious they would accept no challenge to the status quo. Superdelegates are plainly undemocratic, but the post Citizens United world makes both parties absolutely beholden to the corporations.
We literally can not have a candidate that is against business and therefore can not have a candidate that is against fascism.
That said, I will probably continue to pull the lever on my purely symbolic, utterly pointless, placebo vote for the lesser of two evils because people don’t understand that the only non-voters that matter are the ones in battleground states.
We actually CAN have a candidate that’s not in the pocket of big corporate interests. But that person needs to also not look at both parties and think “well, these are the only options.” Ross Perot actually had a decent run in 1992, and he was fucking nuts. A solid governor that declares their own party corrupt and not a part of the future would be seen as a hero, and could build on a groundswell. Newsome just showed us all that he’s not that hero.
Both parties have committed sepuku over the last 12 months anyway. The bravery lies in being the person that has the guts to admit it.
If we keep worrying about keeping political donors happy, we’ll never reform anything; that’s the exact opposite of what they want and will do everything to stop it.
Once he gets in office it’ll be, “we need something to campaign on next election” every time reform comes up. On his final term, he’ll say, “if the party is going to earn votes for my successor, I need to play ball this term,” then the cycle will repeat itself.
Ah yes. The public servants who arent serving the public. Running for any public office should not be a money race. Its been that way for way too long.
You’re right, but we won’t ever get a grass roots candidate through the democrat gauntlet and few people will vote independent over party (despite the wildly misleading graphic showing an independent rise that has been floating around lately).
You’re ignoring that we have a dnc chair with a decade long track record of fair primaries, and that the traditional neoliberal threat is cutting off funds to state parties, and were a year deep into the largest reinvestire of wealth to state parties from DNC.
And what does “vote independent over party” have to do with anything when talking about how we finally have a non biased chair?
What evidence do we have, that the people who would conspire to do it then, aren’t doing it now. Was anyone punished? You say the Chair changed, but did it change to someone better? What about everyone else? What about the donors the DNC is beholden to? Their governance?
What evidence do we have, that the people who would conspire to do it then, aren’t doing it now.
The fact that it’s different people…
Was anyone punished?
Punished for what? What laws do you think were broken?
You say the Chair changed, but did it change to someone better?
Yes, Ken Martin. He ran Minnesota for a decade.
What about everyone else?
The vice chairs? I don’t know who you’re even talking about, but the chair has full power
What about the donors the DNC is beholden to?
Take their money and then just not do what they want… The only negative is they’re stop trying to buy us off, but take their money anyways, you’d be an absolute idiot not to when the fight is this serious.
Are you saying the DNC is clean and fair now?
I’ve typed it so much my thumbs are turning blue, at least you’re starting to wonder if what I keep saying is what I’m actually saying.
The most important thing to take out of this:
He knows it’s bad for his inevitable presidential run he’s been focusing on, but he has to do what his wealthy donors want so they keep donating.
If he manages a first term, he’ll still do shit like this, because he needs his donors for term 2.
We need a legit grass roots candidate, because when they keep their donors happy, that’s doing what’s good for average Americans.
Campaign Finance Reform is the single issue from which ALL other issues flow. Manipulating campaign financing is what causes everything bad in government. All lobbying, all promises, are bought and paid for with “campaign donations.” It is legal bribery, but bribery just the same.
Presidential Campaigns should be Federally funded, limited to 90-120 days, and tightly regulated in terms of appearances and speech. This is an audition and an interview process for the president of the country, and the process should filter for the very best and most qualified candidates, not the most outrageous. If someone lies, over promises, abuses the other candidates or anyone else, etc. they can, and will, be disqualified from running. It’s not a right to run, it’s a privilege, and that privilege can be rescinded for bad behavior.
whats the point of whoring for campaign money if that whoring costs you the support of the voters?
You’ve just described exactly why the Democratic party lost touch with normal people. They couldn’t resist wealthy donors. Or so says Bernie Sanders all the goddammed time.
Y’all. Stop fucking fooling yourselves. Don’t let others strongman our county into the ground by convincing you to gobble down whatever rancid dick a political party throws at you.
You want the Dems to win? People under 35 should primary every fucking member of Congress. Boomers did this to is, and they’ll keep doing this to us. Fuck them.
…
We vote in primaries to avoid that.
I was trying to get people to vote in primaries, you are telling them to give up on the party and depressed primary turnout is how we get stuck with that shit in the general.
Like, if your honest about what you want, you’re literally working against it right now.
Stop gloating that the party hasn’t run a presidential primary without a preordained winner since 2008.
Prior to 2012, I also believed that. Please keep in mind that the Democratic abuse of Superdelegates in 2016 to screw Bernie was so egregious that they had to reform their system to curb their egos. Some. Now they only have a 15% party leadership stake. So sanguine. So benevolent.
Many states also have closed primaries specifically to keep the party entrenched. Like where I vote, the GOP set it up generations ago, and guess which party has in recent years not lost sleep over it? Certainly not enough to bother changing it.
Primaries are the same sham as local elections with no primary in heavily single-party constituencies. Which is that the entrenched party decides who can run under their brand sure to collect people who vote down the line, and for anyone else, even lifelong registered members of that party, to run as independents. Local elections matter. So do statewide seats. And both parties want nothing more than to be in power, not to represent you.
Thinking that the other party will somehow fix what you don’t like is how we have gotten here and been here since the 90s. Voting only to vote against someone else lets the slime disenfranchise you when you think it hasn’t. Relying on a party to maybe, hopefully, let your vote go to who they decide, isn’t democracy, and it doesn’t defend or uphold democratic values. Otherwise maybe we would have something a bit more coherent than Schumer’s strongly worded letters and Newsom being cautious as a lawyer “letting” one comms person tweet sass a few times for the media traction.
Maybe I didn’t make myself clear:
Fuck both these parties and everyone involved. Unseat them all. Fuck both the parties, they ain’t done shit but for themselves.
The treatment of Bernie in the 2016 primary also made me lose faith in our form of flawed Democracy. Living in a red state, primaries are my only chance to have any effect on the national Democratic Party and 2016 made it obvious they would accept no challenge to the status quo. Superdelegates are plainly undemocratic, but the post Citizens United world makes both parties absolutely beholden to the corporations.
We literally can not have a candidate that is against business and therefore can not have a candidate that is against fascism.
That said, I will probably continue to pull the lever on my purely symbolic, utterly pointless, placebo vote for the lesser of two evils because people don’t understand that the only non-voters that matter are the ones in battleground states.
We actually CAN have a candidate that’s not in the pocket of big corporate interests. But that person needs to also not look at both parties and think “well, these are the only options.” Ross Perot actually had a decent run in 1992, and he was fucking nuts. A solid governor that declares their own party corrupt and not a part of the future would be seen as a hero, and could build on a groundswell. Newsome just showed us all that he’s not that hero.
Both parties have committed sepuku over the last 12 months anyway. The bravery lies in being the person that has the guts to admit it.
If we keep worrying about keeping political donors happy, we’ll never reform anything; that’s the exact opposite of what they want and will do everything to stop it.
Once he gets in office it’ll be, “we need something to campaign on next election” every time reform comes up. On his final term, he’ll say, “if the party is going to earn votes for my successor, I need to play ball this term,” then the cycle will repeat itself.
The lesson here is:
Ah yes. The public servants who arent serving the public. Running for any public office should not be a money race. Its been that way for way too long.
You’re right, but we won’t ever get a grass roots candidate through the democrat gauntlet and few people will vote independent over party (despite the wildly misleading graphic showing an independent rise that has been floating around lately).
You’re ignoring that we have a dnc chair with a decade long track record of fair primaries, and that the traditional neoliberal threat is cutting off funds to state parties, and were a year deep into the largest reinvestire of wealth to state parties from DNC.
And what does “vote independent over party” have to do with anything when talking about how we finally have a non biased chair?
Like, what are you even talking about?
your savior presided over the ouster of David Hogg and the attempted ratfucking of Zohran Mamdani.
The leaks resulted in allegations of bias against Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign, in apparent contradiction with the DNC leadership’s publicly stated neutrality,[8] as several DNC operatives openly derided Sanders’s campaign and discussed ways to advance Clinton’s nomination.
Yes, everyone is aware that happened…
That was a decade ago, the chair changes every 4 years…
If AOC becomes president, are you going to blame her for what’s trump doing now?
Obviously that wouldn’t make sense, but it’s the same thing you’re doing right now
What evidence do we have, that the people who would conspire to do it then, aren’t doing it now. Was anyone punished? You say the Chair changed, but did it change to someone better? What about everyone else? What about the donors the DNC is beholden to? Their governance?
Are you saying the DNC is clean and fair now?
The fact that it’s different people…
Punished for what? What laws do you think were broken?
Yes, Ken Martin. He ran Minnesota for a decade.
The vice chairs? I don’t know who you’re even talking about, but the chair has full power
Take their money and then just not do what they want… The only negative is they’re stop trying to buy us off, but take their money anyways, you’d be an absolute idiot not to when the fight is this serious.
I’ve typed it so much my thumbs are turning blue, at least you’re starting to wonder if what I keep saying is what I’m actually saying.
I find your answers honest, but unsatisfying and just a touch naive.
Think harder.
Checking your post history helped figure it out…
Have the future you fight for 💋