Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said in an interview with NBC News that he will encourage progressive voters to still back Democrats on the ticket in November even if moderates are victorious in the primaries.
I can weigh the platforms of each party, see that one (GOP) is significantly worse than the other, and have reasonable expectation of shaping the platform of the superior party (Democratic) for the better. Calling that blindness is to make yourself morally irrelevant.
What good comes from abandoning reform of a decadent party so weak it can’t even bind it’s members? The campaign war chest, brand name, and entrenched two-party benefits are there for the taking.
People point to Bernie and complain about his voting or the debacle of his nomination as evidence that the establishment has a stranglehold on the party. The truth is that he’s done more to dismantle their stranglehold than anyone in modern history (yes, more than Trump, the Clintons, Obama or Biden): exposing that the boat can be rocked through the sheer populism of good economic policy.
We’ve now seen that simply running decent candidates in a similar manner (some farther left) doesn’t just threaten but overpowers them. The concerted effort against Mamdani, El-Sayed, Donavan McKinney and others has had middling-to-miserable results.
Simply continuing to vote blue when necessary and engage in primary insurgency drains their resources and weakens their grip. Voting with your conscience (read: no strategy) marks you as an “independent”, essentially a non-voter who can be safely ignored. Why bother listening to you when courting even a single red vote is double the value? You have no impact on their internal policies and can’t threaten them in a primary.
None of this is a compelling argument to vote in the general for a fascist who happens to align with the democratic party.
Again, I go back to Justice, Fetterman, Cuellar, Newsom, Rahm Emmanuel if he tries to run again. There’s no reason to support any of these people at any stage of the election process for any reason.
If you can’t see past the party label to the individual policy, that’s definitely an example of blindness
I can weigh the platforms of each party, see that one (GOP) is significantly worse than the other, and have reasonable expectation of shaping the platform of the superior party (Democratic) for the better. Calling that blindness is to make yourself morally irrelevant.
What good is weighing the party platform when individual Congressmen aren’t bound to it?
A good leader can whip the votes. Hakeem Jeffries is… not… a good leader.
He’s great at getting whipped
What good comes from abandoning reform of a decadent party so weak it can’t even bind it’s members? The campaign war chest, brand name, and entrenched two-party benefits are there for the taking.
People point to Bernie and complain about his voting or the debacle of his nomination as evidence that the establishment has a stranglehold on the party. The truth is that he’s done more to dismantle their stranglehold than anyone in modern history (yes, more than Trump, the Clintons, Obama or Biden): exposing that the boat can be rocked through the sheer populism of good economic policy.
We’ve now seen that simply running decent candidates in a similar manner (some farther left) doesn’t just threaten but overpowers them. The concerted effort against Mamdani, El-Sayed, Donavan McKinney and others has had middling-to-miserable results.
Simply continuing to vote blue when necessary and engage in primary insurgency drains their resources and weakens their grip. Voting with your conscience (read: no strategy) marks you as an “independent”, essentially a non-voter who can be safely ignored. Why bother listening to you when courting even a single red vote is double the value? You have no impact on their internal policies and can’t threaten them in a primary.
None of this is a compelling argument to vote in the general for a fascist who happens to align with the democratic party.
Again, I go back to Justice, Fetterman, Cuellar, Newsom, Rahm Emmanuel if he tries to run again. There’s no reason to support any of these people at any stage of the election process for any reason.