cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/22940159
Bernie Sanders caused a stir last week, when the independent senator from Vermont and two-time contender for the Democratic presidential nomination sent a post-election email to his progressive supporters across the country. In it, he argued that the Democrats suffered politically in 2024 at least in part because they ran a campaign that focused on “protecting the status quo and tinkering around the edges.”
In contrast, said Sanders, “Trump and the Republicans campaigned on change and on smashing the existing order.” Yes, he explained, “the ‘change’ that Republicans will bring about will make a bad situation worse, and a society of gross inequality even more unequal, more unjust and more bigoted.”
Despite that the reality of the threat they posed, Trump and the Republicans still won a narrow popular-vote victory for the presidency, along with control of the US House. That result has inspired an intense debate over the future direction not just of the Democratic Party but of the country. And the senator from Vermont is in the thick of it.
In his email, Sanders, a member of the Senate Democratic Caucus who campaigned in states across the country this fall for Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democratic ticket, asked a blunt question: “Will the Democratic leadership learn the lessons of their defeat and create a party that stands with the working class and is prepared to take on the enormously powerful special interests that dominate our economy, our media and our political life?”
His answer: “Highly unlikely. They are much too wedded to the billionaires and corporate interests that fund their campaigns.”
Only one of the two major parties helped ensure that a good friend of mine had legal access to lifesaving healthcare recently, and it wasn’t Republicans. Pretending one party isn’t worse isn’t productive. How are you going to approach the spoiler effect, or do you simply not care about all the death and suffering that will result from strategy that doesn’t tackle the spoiler effect?
The spoiler is running right wing candidates posing as liberal. Both times the DNC has done that we got trump.
Words have meanings. If you don’t want to answer the question because you’re embarrassed of the fact that you care for political purity over the lives of others, that’s on you.
The only thing that is embarrassing is liberals thinking their candidates are progressive
They’re just here to cosplay as revolutionaries. They don’t give a fuck about the people who actually suffer under these regimes.