I guess the issue is they can't win with their status quo, even to a really nasty opponent.

As someone who has been unreasonable and self destructive when having a breakdown about living on a dying planet surrounded by psychotic apes: I appreciate your understanding.

I wish I had your optimism. I grew up knowing too many nice, intelligent people who believe in blinkered conservative pigshit of the worst kind to think that leftists would be immune.

Many of these people are not bad people at heart. But I accept that, largely, they absolutely believe what they're saying.

Ideological insanity knows no boundaries.

That being said, I'm generally not put off by people being assholes. I've been cussed out by folks and easily not held a grudge (at least, not about that - God knows I can hold grudges on other matters). Hell, as any number of people can attest to, I have plenty of asshole moments myself. It's when the assholery comes not from attitude, but from the construction of a coherent-if-counterproductive-and-hypocritical worldview that sanctions fascism and mass-murder because "Libs bad" that I get bent out of shape.

I want to be Kerensky and say no enemies to my left. But every fucking day I'm confronted on here with the fact that that just isn't true.

Outright fascists don’t come to power in a vacuum; they ride in on the back of flawed liberal moderates. It’s the incrementalism, the “half-a-loaf” social policy, the permanent “maybe later” on universal programs that manufactures the very desperation fascism feeds on. You’re treating moderates like innocent bystanders when they’re the enabling architecture.

My point here is not to absolve liberal moderates of doing a dogshit job at fending off fascism. My point here is that between the two, it should be a no-brainer to anyone with a brain.

Liberals are bad. That's in the title. If we're checking out and leaving the task of fighting fascism to liberals, we're screwed. At the same time, refusing to work with liberals, especially in a context like the US where the electorate remains overwhelmingly right-wing, even in the Dem electorate, is nothing but a path straight into the gullet of fascism.

This is WW2. I don't know which side you want to regard as the Western Allies and which as the Soviet Union, but either way, in this analogy, we need each other to overcome the fucking Nazis.

And Mondami’s win in NY just underlines it: when voters are offered something they actually want, they show up. Shockingly, people prefer a program over a guilt trip.

I have to disagree with this - Mamdani's win is spectacular and encouraging, but attempting to extrapolate the primary of a city where liberalism has a pretty firm hold wherein the establishment Dem was a sexual predator to a national template is not the easy connection many try to make it seem.

I mean to emphasize here that I don't disagree that we should run left, nor that the 'triangulation' of Dem leadership saps enthusiasm rather than generates it. Only that Mamdani's win - like Bernie's generation of enthusiasm - does not necessarily extrapolate to progressive victories nationwide.

Look at previous national or even state Dem primaries, even in liberal strongholds like Maryland. "People want an actual program" is not high on the fucking agenda. People want someone who seems to stand for something, regardless of whether they know jack about shit. And even then, appearing too 'socialist' can still scare many voters off.

I've been a part of enough failed progressive campaigns to know that simple standing for left-wing ideals with a good and clearly expressed plan is very often not enough.

Material promises traded for vibes and scolding.

The problem with this is that there were extensive material promises by Harris in 2024 - and like Hillary in 2016, they didn't matter a single goddamn whit. For the record, I made the questionable decision (if in a safe state) to protest vote against Clinton in 2016 - something I moderately regret, but which reflects that, even then, before I really radicalized, I regarded Clinton as a do-nothing neolib. Yet she quite distinctly had an extensive program with very real and serious material promises to the electorate. I followed Hillary and her platform closely, and her reputation as a policy wonk was not undeserved - reading through her 2016 platform, it would be hard to argue that Obama, who was much more popular, had more extensive material promises to the electorate in '08 or '12. But those promises didn't matter, for two reasons.

One, because most of the electorate doesn't actually give a shit about plans. They don't want material promises. They want vibes - but they want good vibes. The Republicans asspat their electorate with identity politics - the Dems, as a demographically broader coalition, have less leeway with that. You are right that the electorate doesn't want to be guilted (though I would argue that for people who are politically involved enough to be discussing the relative merits of socialism and abstention online, questions of moral culpability are not amiss) - but they don't want policy discussion. They want to feel like heroes or martyrs. And they want candidates to give them that.

Second, because Hillary didn't 'appear' to stand for anything. This is a broader problem with the Dem mainstream - they think that because there is a position between two extremes where most people fall, the 'smart' thing to do is to 'triangulate' to that position. But people overwhelmingly don't vote based on actual policy positions, they vote on fucking vibes. If you 'vibe' like you're going to 'fix' things, it doesn't matter that you couldn't spell potato with unlimited time and a dictionary. What matters is that they're 'getting' that vibe from your pretty words.

Both of those problems were repeated, without imagination or, apparently, the capacity for pattern recognition, by the Harris campaign in 2024. But it wasn't a lack of promises made - it was the lack of passion they were delivered with. The electorate didn't want anodyne policy details regardless of how moderate or radical they were, they wanted a show. And Harris failed to deliver an entertaining show, unlike Obama - or unlike Trump.

guess you got what you wanted then. it's working out great.

There's a difference, in my view, between good faith criticism of Democrats that's rooted in reality - which is necessary and for fucks sake should have been listened to last year ... ...and hyperbolic performances of ideological purity for in-group approval - which social media has made far more common and popular.

The former might recognize the complexities of political coalitions, the American electorate, and public policy while offering prescriptive recommendations on how Democrats should advance - and win with - left-wing policies.

The latter is steeped in black-and-white absolutism, hyperbole, no true scotsman bullshit, fantastical thinking, and whatever this month's overused leftwing meme phrase is ("HAND IN GLOVE!"). There's usually zero depth there because it's a worldview shaped by soundbites on social media, not nuanced reality. It's nice to believe that there's a magical dormant socialist majority just waiting to be activated in the United States but no, there isn't. We have to build it first.

Mamdani succeeded because he had the energy of the former, not the latter. He spoke directly to peoples' issues, went out into the community to build bridges, and so far he's seemed flexible about the specifics of his policy proposals - like, he cares more about moving things towards a more equitable, just, left-wing outcome than making sure what he does is the purest socialist magic this side of Karl Marx, popularity and effectiveness be damned. He's building an actual broad fucking coalition of support, an exercise that necessarily requires dialogue, compromise, realism, etc. That shit functions much better in the real world than ideological absolutism. Even Lenin himself had to adapt the NEP, after all.

Building a somewhat large coalition must precede durable political or systemic change. Either that or you enforce it at the barrel of the gun and, uh, fuck that.

We'll see if other Dems try to throw sand in Mamdani's gears or not; they seemed like they were going to at first but now they seem like they're scared off by his genuine popularity (which they all wish they could emulate). Let's hope he can keep his plot armor here - and that he SUCCEEDS as mayor. If he ends up more popular than other Democrats and his left policies are successful we'll see more new young faces following his lead in other places.

I joined this community because I want to read and participate in more discussions with - and build coalitions with - more of the former, the Mamdani's. I'm fucking tired of the vocal idiots demanding space communism TODAY while refusing to engage with reality and the steps necessary to get from here to there. That bullshit is getting us further from a left-wing populace & world and it needs to be shot into the sun.

If you wanna win the next election, learn from the mistakes of this one instead of just spending all your energy yelling at the left.

I’m old enough to know that Democrats will never do this.

Apathetic bloody planet. I’ve no sympathy at all.

I'd be fine with being demolished for an intergalactic freeway at this point tbqh. Just make it quick.