this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2025
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[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago (4 children)

You change the party in the primaries. You choose which party wins in the general.

When your choice is between a shit sandwich and fascism, you eat the fucking sandwich.

[–] WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 day ago (2 children)

The Democratic Party has literally gone to court and won rulings arguing that they don't have to follow their own rules or primary processes. They're a private club, and they are free to put their thumb on the scale whenever and however they please. Those doing the most to change the Democratic Party are completely bypassing the party and organizing through external organizations. The Democratic Party will demand that you spend decades canvassing and working in the trenches before making any meaningful contribution. And they will only allow the most craven and corrupt to have any real seat at the table. You only get to climb the Democratic party structure if you tow the party line.

[–] okmko@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Honestly I've come around more and more to bypassing the Democrat party.

Every time after we get ice cream hasn't changed the fact that our choice will always be between ice cream and driving off cliff until we eventually drive off the cliff. Either we drive off the cliff now or later, so maybe we should probably try to stop getting ice cream.

[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The primary voters in New York City just selected a leftist. The establishment is passed, but he's their nominee.

You know why Bernie didn't get nominated? Because he lost the primaries. It wasn't swung by superdelegates. They didn't fix the vote. Yeah, they clearly preferred the corporate dems, but all the "interefering" they did was getting the party establishment (that had been selected through primaries) to push for their preferred candidate.

Trump wasn't an establishment Republican until he won the primaries, and then the establishment who opposed him was primaried. He transformed the party in just a few years by getting his base to show up and vote in primaries.

The left needs to learn from that.

[–] WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works 6 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

You're addressing a non sequitur and glossing over how the DNC actually manipulated the 2016 and 2020 elections, and their actions after the campaign.

The DNC put their thumb on the scale in 2016 before the election even started. Yes, the super delegate votes didn't directly give Hillary tie breaking votes, but that was never the real impact. Do you remember 2016? I do. I remember every media outlet running with stories about how Hillary already had the nomination in the bag before the first vote was cast. The superdelegates all made big public endorsements for her, and the media showered her with hundreds of delegates in her column even before the Iowa caucus. This put her at a massive unfair advantage before the voting even began.

In 2020, they ratfucked Bernie again, again in a way that you completely ignored. There were several candidates running, both centrist and liberal. At a crucial moment, when Bernie looked like he actually could win the nomination, the DNC coordinated with all the centrist candidates. They arranged to have all the centrists except Biden drop out, while there were still several progressive candidates in the race dividing the progressive vote. The DNC arranged a unified centrist push behind Biden and thus handed the nomination to him.

You completely ignored the ways the DNC actually ratfucked Bernie and just focused on a non-sequitur.

And the court cases I'm referring to mostly came after the 2016 election. Bernie was leading a movement, and a movement of his delegates tried to gain influence in the party. They ran for party committee seats in many states. Repeatedly the DNC ignored their own rules to prevent these Bernie delegates from taking power within the party. They massively screwed over Bernie's movement, completely ignoring the will of the voters.

Yes, in theory, people can take over the Democratic party. But it has proven much, much more resilient to this kind of takeover than the Republican party. People have been trying for decades, but the DNC has been working to prevent just this kind of progressive takeover since the 1960s. Ultimately both parties are very pro-corporate. Insurgent candidates within the Republican party don't want to resist corporate power, so they're not really rocking the boat that much. Insurgent candidates in the Democratic party actually want to go directly against the core interests of the party leadership, thus they face much stiffer opposition.

History is the guide here. Abolitionist forces tried for many decades to take over the Whig party and to get it to adopt a firm Abolitionist stance. For years they tried everything, but it never worked, the existing powerful leaders were just too well entrenched. The Whigs always told the abolitionists the same things Democrats tell progressives today - focus on the current election, we're the lesser of two evils, at least we're not trying to expand slavery. In the end, change only happened when the Republican party was founded and drove the Whigs to extinction. We're going to have to do the same to the Democratic party. Some corruption just becomes too entrenched to be fixed. The abolitionists then accepted that they had to abandon the Whigs and let the party die - even if that meant losing an election cycle or two. We've so far refused to do this, and the Democrats know that they can abuse their base however they want, and they will never face any real consequences for it.

[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 0 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Believe it or not, we're not living in the 1850s. There is no path to victory for a third party in our system. Not in 2026, and not in 10478. We live in a 2-party system.

New York just nominated a true progressive that pissed off the corporate Dems. If they can do it, so can the rest of us. We should be riding that momentum instead of working hard to get Republicans re-elected by telling people not to vote Democrat.

[–] WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works 3 points 17 hours ago

We live in a two party system. Or, more precisely...we play politics as a game whose rules with great pressure encourage the formation of two parties. This is true. But those two parties are not eternal. if one or the other is weakened enough, they can be toppled from their throwns. A three party system is not stable long term. But the parties themselves are not eternal.

You don’t change the party in the primaries.

I’ve been trying to do that for decades and it doesn’t work.

That or this is what most of the party actually wants.

Either way we’re screwed.

[–] myrrh@ttrpg.network 2 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)

...if the primaries represent a legitimate coalition, sure; if not, f*ck 'em: they can go down with the ship, too...