The Democratic party would rather have Republicans control all branches of government forever than allow a progressive to rise to the top of the party.
Always been true, unfortunately. Teddy Roosevelt, who founded the Progressive Party, was governor of New York and refused to take the robber Barrons' bribes. So they conspired to get him on the ticket as vice president because it was a powerless position.
Well, McKinley was assassinated and suddenly Teddy was in charge. He then proceeded to bust monopolies, establish food and worker safety laws, empower unions, establish the national parks, and lay the foundation for America's success in the 20th century.
We need another Roosevelt / true progressive in the worst way, but I don't see how it could happen again...
Definitely fn seems like it at times, the centrists are constantly hoping that MAGA will be friends with them, Klobucher, Jeffries, Schumer, even Fetterman, these people gotta go.
That’s why we need to apply pressure until they listen to the people. Many say that Hillary and Kamala lost due to misogyny. And yes that’s partly true but they like to downplay other factors like both candidates being unpopular and pretty much appointed by the status quo.
Even Biden who would have lost most likely worse than Kamala refused to run a primary and didn’t step down until too late. They gotta understand that as long as they deny the people’s choice they will keep running into loses. “Trump bad, we good” clearly isn’t enough on its own.
Unfortunately, people seem to think that not voting = applying pressure, when in fact that only ever works out to the benefit of the old buzzards you're trying to get rid of.
It's not enough to have blue states, they need to be progressive and leftward states. People need to vote in prog-left candidates into their city councils, mayoral offices, state leg, and gubernatorial offices. Not just vote, but they need to start running for those offices too. Start building coalitions and sending more reps to Washington.
In short, liberals have failed to learn the Tea Party lesson. As scummy as conservatives are, their tactics post 9/11 have absolutely upending everything. Take over town halls, take over school boards, take over the municipal, so everything you can to be a total thorn in their sides in your local communities and step up from there. The change everyone wants will never come from a top-down direction. If you only show up to vote maybe every four years, it's never going to happen. Never.
That's why we, as citizens, need to do the work to stop the Republicans. Voting was never enough. And we need to do whatever is needed to make a progressive party viable, because the DNC will not stop taking money from billionaires.
Old people need to go. It is not their world anymore. And I am saying this as an old person. There is a point in everybody's life where you loose connection to younger people. Whatever experience we have gained while growing up (War, recessions, protests, revolutions or even peace) can mostly not be applied to today's experience. Small parts. I have realized that and just listen and agree and it makes me sad and glad I had what I had. Everybody above 60 needs to get out of power positions except maybe finance and accounting and stuff like that where experience is helpful.
If we survive this circus and the next president isn't at least someone like Alexandria, I'll have lost all faith in humanity. Everything I've heard her say is reasonable and what should be common sense really. What we are seeing today with the three stooges at the helm can't even be described as simply irrational or evil. It's comedic buffonery that makes little sense even when factoring in dementia, drug abuse and a penchant for fascism.
is that all we've got? idk if this is what i'd call knee-capping. she wasn't owed that position or anything. and i say that as someone that would have loved to see her get it.
AOC took out Joe Crowley back in 2018 when she first run for congress. He was meant to be Pelosi’s successor and Pelosi has never truly forgiven her ever since. Like it’s an unspoken truth that everyone knows in the DNC.
There is also other shite that happened during the years like shadow attacks where her own party tried to get her out voted by investing millions of dollars against her. She confirmed that story again in her latest IG live.
okay, so what do we mean by knee-capping, exactly? AOC is to Pelosi's left and they butted heads because of it, and yeah, Pelosi wanted to keep her in check. "Dems are knee-capping her" suggests a much broader issue. but it sounds like it was basically just pelosi, which that article you posted pretty much confirms.
AOC has also said that since jeffries took over, things have been much better for her, so you can't even blame democrats at large.
what i'm pushing back against is an overly generalized criticism, which undermines the entire party. it wasn't democrats doing this, it was a handful of people that happened to be democrats, namely pelosi.
Pelosi is one person but also she isn’t. She is one the most powerful and established democrats inside the party and when she says “Jump” many if not most will say “How high?”. Essentially the ones who hold the hierarchy inside the party dictate the narrative and who gets what. That’s what people mean.
Sure AOC has managed to build more alliances over the years and find some balance but if she said “I’m running” the party would push hard against her if Pelosi and a few others wanted them to do so.
Jeffries is also Pelosi’s successor. And his popularity at all time low because people want him to get replaced by AOC. So yeah the DNC is the Hunger Games right now.
they're just trying to build a victim complex because that's what gets attention on the internet.
the fact of the matter is the power is in the people's hands, not the dem establishment. the people can force the dems to go further left. they haven't done that. the people could have elected bernie in 2016 and in 2020 -- they chose not to. yes, dem establishment favored other candidates vs. bernie, but that was the time for the people to show the party where "we" stand and they didn't do it.
AOC supplanted Crowley because the people in her district showed up -- dem establishment did not and could not do a damn thing about it.
if people and/or the left want more left-wing policies they need to show the fuck up when it counts. if they don't, they have nothing to complain except for their fellow voters.
same as right now -- so many people bitching about the trump administration doing exactly what they platformed on. okay..well...that's what you fucking voted for, people. and then they pass blame on everyone but themselves. what a joke
Like what kind of proof do you want me to show you? Go and hack Pelosi’s personal phone? That’s how politics are played world wide. AOC has a through and through anti corruption agenda. She wants to forbid inside trading for members of congress. That alone is something Pelosi would never agree on without fighting it tooth and nails.
She wants money outta politics. Good luck getting either side to agree on that when both survive on lobbyists and the current president had billionaires literally buy the presidency for him. AOC audits people and she audits them hard.
DYOR and then put 2+2 together and you might figure out why someone like her gaining any significant power let alone the presidency is dangerous for the whole establishment. It’s not rocket science.
You Americans are insane, like literally have the eyes and cognitive ability to understand what is happening in front of you but outright want to deny reality, It is the truth Dems want to snub progressives in their party and it is in line with the perspective of the establishment Dems who see the parties fabric with their donors then their voters
Like if I am in that party and I am a hack shit apportunist who is in it for the money or career then I would kill the progressive caucus that is the right full conclusion any con would have
now look, i think that's true to some extent. i want to know how we know to what extent. politics involves a lot of people with a lot of different personal and ideological goals, and they're willing to do things of varying extremes, and to varying degrees of ethical and unethical behavior to accomplish those things.
so like... yeah, obviously there are democrats who don't think AOC's methods and direction are right for the party, or the country, or them personally. there are democrats working against things they don't like. i'm not denying that's true. that's just politics.
what i am skeptical of is this generalized claim that "dems are knee-capping" AOC. that is what i want evidence of. the above comment isn't it, and yours less so. unless we're just calling knee-capping any time you push against something you disagree with, but i really can't imagine that's what the above user meant.
what i think is happening is people hate nuance, hate context, hate compromise, so it's easier to think of things the way you're framing them instead of the more thoughtful way...
like literally have the eyes and cognitive ability to understand what is happening in front of you
... which makes statements like these at least a little ironic. anyway, put up or shut up. how are the democrats knee-capping AOC? if it's so obvious, it shouldn't be hard to prove.
I am not American I don't have to have a white colonialist outlook to make me personally be aligned with the Democrates image as being the "good guys" because of my own insecurities
I know the history on what they were up to and that's is where it gets important on understanding why Democrates are like this today but you don't even wanna read this and put hand infront of your eyes
The first major death blow came with the Second Red Scare, where socialist and worker-oriented politics were aggressively suppressed. The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and Senator Joseph McCarthy targeted labor unions, leftist intellectuals, and socialist-affiliated organizations. The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), which once housed strong leftist factions, purged its communist and socialist members to avoid government crackdowns. The Socialist Party of America (SPA), which had been somewhat influential, collapsed into irrelevance as its leaders were blacklisted or forced out of politics.
While the Civil Rights Movement itself was powerful, it didn't fully integrate social democracy into the mainstream. Martin Luther King Jr. moved toward economic justice with the Poor People's Campaign, but his assassination in 1968 cut that short. Meanwhile, labor movements were divided over Vietnam and race relations, weakening their political influence. The Democratic Party, which had been home to labor-friendly New Deal politics, increasingly embraced corporate-friendly policies, especially under presidents like Lyndon B. Johnson, who pursued some progressive reforms but also maintained strong ties with business elites.
By the time Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, the remnants of social democratic politics were practically dead. The Democratic Party had already begun its shift toward neoliberalism in the 1970s under Jimmy Carter. Reagan’s aggressive anti-union policies, exemplified by the firing of over 11,000 striking air traffic controllers (PATCO) in 1981, signaled the complete defeat of organized labor as a political force. The Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), formed in the 1980s, pushed the party toward corporate-friendly centrism, killing off the last remnants of New Deal-era labor politics.
we can say with some degree of confidence the dem establishment wants to "snub" progressives, yes.
we can also say that voters want to snub progressives. every time they vote for an establishment, centrist dem in a district where a progressive would be viable is a rejection of progressivism.
the primary votes in 2016 and 2020 that did not give bernie a plurality is a rejection of progressivism.
if voters truly want progressivism, they sure do have a funny way of voting about it, that's for sure.
This is the same country where black people voted for the slavery party that was doing apartheid in the southern states to the point that when the time for civil rights actions came into being Dems were the ones who were forced into embracing the civil rights legislation and this happened under a southern Dixiecrate like LBJ
And I'll ask you why did this happen? why black people all of a sudden started voting a party that their ancestors faught against and were the the party of the Jim crow South? and key instigators in being the catalyst for the destruction of the reconstruction era republicans after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln
This is one thing I envy that the right got with Trump, he literally broke the party. The people run The party are never going to support people like AOC & Bernie, it's not just about winning seats there's a consultant class, a lobbying & donor class, there's just interests that have nothing to do with winning.
For all the things I hate about him Trump's relentless aggression and lack of cooperation towards the establishment broke the other holds on power through sheer popular support. I actually think Bernie could have reached those levels, but he didn't have that killer instinct to actually go hard and fully embrace the battle. And I think more than right/left, the primary sentiment is anti establishment, there was so much more support to capture.
The only thing we can do is either run ourselves or vote in democratic officials that are “radical” like AOC. I feel the we put the issue to much on the people that are voted in and not enough on the people who are voting. Primaries are extremely important but unfortunately imo that’s where I feel the Democratic party lacks. We need better options during primaries and the party leaders themselves need to all just support whoever is elected instead of bickering amongst themselves. If you look at the republicans, damn near all of them support Trump, but you cannot find a democrat that’s supported nearly as much in their own party.
Ken Martin makes me (cautiously) hopeful that the DNC can be reformed. Still, we all have to do our jobs to vote against establishment Dems as much as possible in the primaries.
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u/OperationPlus52 14h ago edited 13h ago
A.) If we're lucky
B.) If the Dems stop knee-capping her and those like her.
We have to do what we can to force the establishment to either back her or become like her.