Sen. Chuck Schumer strongly backed Abdul El-Sayed after the progressive candidate’s slim victory in the Michigan primary and vowed that the Democratic “big tent” approach to intraparty feuds will succeed in taking back the Senate in the fall midterms.
The Senate Democratic leader told Punchbowl News he is 100% behind the newly minted nominee, even though the party’s political operation backed rival Rep. Haley Stevens in a contentious primary that El-Sayed narrowly won this week.
“What people don’t understand is that a big tent is a strength, not a weakness,” Schumer said. “It’s how you build a majority.”
Blah blah American Left is Actually Right blah blah, heard it all before. All of that is an oblivious response to precisely what I said, that actual Leftists are winning elections and primaries and running as Democrats. You’re currently taking over the party and you want to, what, complain that you have to? Is it too much for you?
If you want the takeover to continue, you keep backing Democrats so that every cycle, you can pull it further and further left, it’s that fucking simple. Online progressives are the most ADHD political thinkers in the damned world. You are busy taking a party over: finish the job, and part of finishing the job is not sabotaging the party for not being where you want it yet.
“Actual leftists are taking over the dem party” -is that because progressives backed dems no matter what or is it because they held out? -currently taking over the party… are you a goldfish? How long is your memory? Whether these short term recent wins translate into a takeover remains to be seen. -if you want the take over to continue continue taking every DNC candidate to the mat and when they try to use the DNC machine to manipulate outcomes punish them for it.
I do not agree that putting a DNC dem in power moves the system left. You need that assumption to make your position make sense. If that’s not true your argument falls apart. I believe it’s not true.
My final thought… I am clearly not part of your party. The two party system forces people who think other than red or blue to crawl into the husk of one of those positions to participate in the system. If we ever get to a point where we break the two party system it is likely that DEMs and the GOP are both the opposition for the left.
The left is clearly taking over the Democratic Party: Mamdani and AOC are bigger kingmakers than Schumer or Jeffries. The job now is to do everything in your power to continue that ascension. You do that by voting your conscience in the primaries, to put leftists on the ballot, and then vote the party for the election, whoever you have.
The GOP used to be a oligarch-favoring-but-mostly-rational party. A party that could feel shame enough to demand Nixon resign. It was the work of decades to make it what it is today. The Democratic Party used to be union-focused, and got sold off starting with Clinton. It has been a generation going the wrong way, but it can be pulled back. To do so, you have to influence the party with good candidates and public pressure, and that doesn’t happen when you just throw up your hands and curse them all.
Most of the failures of the Democrats of the past couple decades has been media incompetence, and never having more than a sliver of power. Voters have given them razor thin majorities a couple of times, and that results in empowering folks like Sinema and Fetterman and nothing else. They then get punished for not having been strong enough to do more than they did. You have to keep at it. When you keep at it, you get progress, incremental improvement. When you immediately take your ball and go home, the GOP comes in to undo everything the Dems managed to do.
You’re not getting a third party. You’re just not. It is vastly easier to shape the Democrats back into being the party of the New Deal and the Great Society, than it would be to build a viable third party. It is just structurally impossible.
Be well comrade
*Edit: fitting