Democratic socialism at work

 

Jesus Christ

 Is she a member?  A plant?  OK, I know, you can't be a member of an organization that doesn't exist.  WTF?

Effing insane.

Antifa is short for anti-fascist.  So...we don't want anti-fascists in America?  We want fascists, apparently.

Seems to me the intent is to classify the DSA a terrorist group.

Foreign?

Convince your Democratic congress persons

 

Dem establishment behaving like Republicans -- in Nevada this time

On March 6, a coalition of progressive candidates backed by the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America took over the leadership of the Nevada Democratic Party, sweeping all five party leadership positions in a contested election that evening. [Judith] Whitmer, who had been chair of the Clark County Democratic Party, was elected chair.

The establishment had prepared for the loss, having recently moved $450,000 out of the party’s coffers and into the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s account. The DSCC will put the money toward the 2022 reelection bid of Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, a vulnerable first-term Democrat.

[...]

[After the results were in, Whitmer] got an email from the party’s executive director, Alana Mounce. The message from Mounce began with a note of congratulations, before getting to her main point.

She was quitting. So was every other employee. And so were all the consultants. And the staff would be taking severance checks with them.

[...]

The mass exodus of party staff, despite the rhetoric around unity, wasn’t a shock, Whitmer told The Intercept. “We weren’t really surprised, in that we were prepared for it,” she said. “But what hit us by surprise and was sort of shocking is that for a slate that claimed that they were all about unity, and kept this false narrative of division going on throughout the entire campaign — in fact they kept intensifying that — that’s what was surprising about it, was the willingness to just walk away, instead of working with us.”

[...]

The [2016 Bernie] Sanders campaign focused on organizing tens of thousands of young Latino voters in the state, with the goal of activating people whom the party hadn’t bothered with before. And it worked: In the 2020 cycle, after investing heavily in Nevada, Sanders won a commanding victory in the Nevada caucuses.

[...]

Progressive groups like the Clark County Left Caucus, of which Whitmer was chair, and local DSA chapters had been organizing for Sanders across Nevada since 2016. They used their momentum, and the state-level delegates they picked up during the caucuses, to continue activating progressive pockets in the state with a focus on local office. Progressives led by the Left Caucus won a majority on the state Democratic board this summer, a sign that their momentum was growing even without a candidate at the top of the Democratic ticket to get behind.

[...]

During the presidential race, the conflict between the Sanders element and the Reid machine had been kept below a boil partly as a result of the personal relationships at play. Sanders’s 2020 brain trust was significantly made up of former aides to Reid who remain on good terms with the former majority leader.

[...]

But when the Sanders campaign ended, the establishment was ready to maneuver against [the progressive Democratic Socialists].

[...]

After years of Republican control, Democrats now hold the governor’s mansion, the state Senate, and the state House, as well as both U.S. Senate seats. [...] Instead of finding a way to work with the newcomers, the Reid machine is setting up an independent shop. Reid declined to comment.

  The Intercept

And they'll lose those two seats in 2022 if they do.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Wise up

Rep. Joe Cunningham (D-S.C.) said Wednesday he does not support Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) proposals that the congressman labeled as “socialism.”

“South Carolinians don’t want socialism,” Cunningham said.

  The Hill

Yes. They. Do.

The mistake Democratic Socialists have been making for decades is allowing the word socialist to maintain a negative connotation. They need to remind people what socialism means: Medicare, Social Security, tax-payer funded roads, public schools, libraries, parks, etc.

They need to associate it with countries like Norway and Sweden, not Cuba and Venezuela. And definitely not Nazis.  But they needed to do it ages ago.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Obama chastens Dem progressives

Speaking at a town hall event on Saturday for the Obama Foundation in Berlin, the former president spoke about the need for compromise in politics, citing the Affordable Care Act as something that he said signified progress even though it did not achieve all of his aspirations for U.S. health care.

"One of the things I do worry about sometimes among progressives in the United States —maybe it’s true here as well — is a certain kind of rigidity where we say, 'Uh, I’m sorry, this is how it’s going to be,' and then we start sometimes creating what’s called a 'circular firing squad,' where you start shooting at your allies because one of them has strayed from purity on the issues. And when that happens, typically the overall effort and movement weakens," he said.

[...]

"[Y]ou have to recognize that the way we structure democracy requires you to take into account people who don’t agree with you, and that by definition means you’re not going to get 100 percent of what you want," he added.

  The Hill

So they could just let the ultra-conservatives drag them further and further to the right, and let Mitch McConnell, like John Boehner ahead of him, water down or quash everything they want to do.

You had your turn, Barack, and you failed in so many ways. Step aside.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.