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It's almost as though people want good policies. Bah, the people are fools! Let's move further to the right to capture moderates!
-Dems
Dems continue to be baffled by the popularity of progressive politicians. They can’t fathom Americans wanting less & less to do with their moderate-right-wing bullshit, while the far-right moves farther & farther right.
It's the foreign influence within the DNC brought in after private money flooded US politics. Get rid of Citizens United and the system will do a lot to correct itself.
While I'm glad he won and the message this sends to Democrat leadership, I think making this claim: "It seems the pendulum is swinging back towards left-wing politics" is very premature.
He won a Democrat primary in a deep blue city in a blue state, the same that elected AOC.
I don't think this really signals much other than, yes NYC likes leftist candidates, as we already know from AOC. This may or may not signal any kind of larger pattern about American political feeling as a whole.
If the same doesn't happen in cities and states across the country, it will just be disregarded as a fluke.
NYC is overwhelmingly democratic, but not left. They have a big share of rather conservative Democrats, which makes the victory of AOC and Mamdani even more impressive.
Look at the past few mayors and immediately your point is disproven.
I think part of the victory is actually showing the ability for the DNC leadership to project force is greatly diminished. They pulled out all the stops. AIPAC, DNC, The entire media apparatus, all the ad buying, the poison pill of hypocrisy, and finally, the sex pest Bill Clinton.
The victory here is very, very much that you win elections with people power, not $. The rumblings of this were actually that judicial election in Wisconsin which got Elon pushed out of the WH. And frankly, its signature was detectable in 2024 where no matter the spending, Democrats couldn't motivate voters to show up.
It’s a huge poke in the eye of democrats who say anything left of Hitler loses elections.
Jesus fucking christ, where my crew at?
This is our moment to fucking run it in the faces of the idiots telling us we needed to have candidates with barely left of center politics in this country.
People who have told you you need to accept less from candidates because abwd are the toxic bane that handed us Trump. You can't win elections on being a diet piece of shit; you actually have to stand for some thing.
what does abwd mean?
ABWD refers to "Any Blue Will Do", which is a slogan, ideology, and voting strategy associated with what is now collectively known as "Blue MAGA".
The charitable version of their argument is that we need to just support every D, no matter what. The problem that ABWD creates is two fold. The first problem, is that in effect, the policy works against its self as electoral strategy. It second problem is that it also works against itself as governing strategy. I'm going to refer to these as "anti-strategies" because I think its important to point out that they are thought about and employed as if they are in-fact strategies that could win an election. They make you feel like a smart person, and are regularly used as a cudgel against other approaches, but they are self-defeating: an anti-strategy hurts you, not helps you.
This clip of Whoopi Goldberg saying she would vote for Joe Biden even if he was pooping his pants on stage highlights:
So the issue that ABWD creates in this context is that, even though Whoopi here is clear that she would vote for a candidate so aged that they shit themselves on stage, American voters wont. And this problem is rampant across Democratic primaries. We're constantly getting candidates forced into elections through AIPAC, the DCCC, directly from the DNC, who aren't electable within the Democratic base, for whatever reason. Here, Whoopi has effectively lowered the bar to the floor. And the problem is, that while a pants-shitter might be fine for Whoopi, its not fine for literally everyone else. By insisting on this anti-strategy, that we had to support Biden as the candidate when it was clear he was completely incapable of governing, let alone winning the election (even when Trump was as unpopular as he was), this insistence was basically an instance we lose the election. Its an important historical footnote that Blue MAGA/ ABWD did win the ideological fight that summer. And we lost the 2024 election as a result.
So the second issue with ABWD/ Blue MAGA is that we end up with Blue Dogs, or Democrats that are basically worthless for progressing any Democratic legislative or governance priorities. Effectively, ABWD is used to put conservative, basically Republican Democrats into safe blue districts, which they might hold for decades. A classic example of this was AOC versus Crowley, where Crowley held the house seat responsible for Queens, NY, one of the most progressive house district populations there is. And he REGULARLY defeated, shut down any kind of progressive legislation. There are many, many others, for example, Ed Case, House District 1, Honolulu HI, who voted to censure Al Greene. ABWD/ Blue MAGA results in bad Democrats getting into office and holding space which would otherwise be occupied by more reliable, more progressive Democrats. When you go to actually get get anything done, ABWD defeats your ability to govern.
Well, I'd differentiate between primary and general election. It's definitely time to overthrow the democratic establishment, and do the same as AOC or now Mamdani. Third parties won't have a chance, but overtaking the Democrats (like the tea party) is possible.
Nevertheless, in the general election, you should definitely vote against fascism, even if the Democratic candidate is awful as well.
Anyone blue will do…maybe?
Correct.
What I'm not shocked about is that they're so out of touch with what we want.
I still bet they're gonna find a way to ignore the results and give us status cuomo.
they're aware of what we need; they're just placing their desire to become richer ahead of it.
Pelosian ethics is a discussion of competing conceptions of the good for Pelosi.
I haven't thought about her in a while but I kind of assumed she just turned to dust and blew away at some point.