SF is incredibly liberal, I could absolutely see Nancy losing and finally being forced to retire. Just gotta get people out to vote during the Primary.

Pelosi was elected when she was 41-42. Saikat Chakrabarti is 39, so only a couple years younger than when Pelosi was put into Congress. This is the perfect time for her to be forced to retire.

This is stupid. Bernie is great but if you want a progressive candidate like him it should be AOC. Bernie will be 86 in 2028. That’s nuts. It’s crazy how many people who harp on how we shouldn’t have old people in charge are suddenly okay with it when it’s the one they like.

Bernie is too old. It. Should. Not. Be. Him. Under any circumstances.

30 years ago he was also in his 50s and a 3 term congressman in Vermont about to be reelected in the 1996 election for his 4th term. Basically the same place AOC is now, he also wasn’t nearly the powerhouse he is now. The only reason he is the person he is now is because of everything after.

Are they unprepared though? Because every time they get full power they get shit done. Not as much as would be ideal but they still do stuff. And they also would have passed multiple more things in 21-22 if they had been given more seats in the Senate, having a 50-50 Senate made it only possible to get some things done not everything, they could have played dirty and gotten more done. For instance they weren’t able to pass their Voting reform bill that had passed the House and would drastically have changed and improved how we vote. But it’s still BS to say they don’t get anything done. That’s literally far right propaganda that has become so pervasive it convinces people on both sides that the Democrats are useless and never do anything.

That said, about Project 2025. It was put together by the Heritage Foundation. A think tank that does its work and puts it out for free. They’re backed by right wing billionaires. So the Republican party didn’t make it, despite it being their platform. Also wouldn’t it be Project 2029 for theirs since 2027 is a midterm and the whole point for that is to obstruct and do oversight on trump and his administration by having any power again. That said again. They don’t have the massive far right billionaires driving the equivalent of a Project 2025 and democratic voters also frequently argue against Billionaires driving something like that. Project 2025 is successful because all the work was done by Heritage.

Also also, I 100% agree that it’s insane they keep playing nice. They have to play dirty and that means breaking some rules which they seem unwilling to do.

But they are put into power by the Voters and then punished by the Voters despite doing significant legislation and improving the country when they get full power. So them not being able to take power for as much time as republicans has to do with the voters and the Republicans cheating with gerrymandering and voter suppression. And general Republican propaganda destroying the system.

But even this last Election Harris wanted to increase the minimum wage, wanted to put caps on rent increases, wanted to give first time home buyers 25,000 down payment assistance, wanted to legalize weed, wanted to introduce an Unrealized gains tax on people who have stock portfolios bigger than 100 million, increasing the corporate tax rate, talking about actually trying to punish companies who engage in shrinkflation. She had progressive policies on her platform, but instead of Democrats going out and voting and the progressive legislation driving people to the polls, everyone summarized her as only ever being not-Tump and them being the same and some saying she even had no policies. Democrats have things they campaign on, but the Voters say no. Mainly because the left doesn’t vote, or split their vote, and the right ALWAYS votes.

Personally, I’m not saying the Democrats can’t or shouldn’t be better, I think the party needs to be drastically reformed and we need to primary and kick out the older generation and we need more progressives who can talk more like real people. But I’m also trying to be fair about how things actually happen when they are in power.

Well a major influence on that is because people keep voting for Republicans even when Democrats have progressive policies on their platforms. Republicans winning the House in 2010 kneecapped every single thing the Democrats had been striving for. 2010 had the lowest turn out for a midterm in decades. Often because of people on the left blaming Obama for not fixing everything right away, or because there is a depressingly large population of the country that don’t even know midterms exist.

Republicans fuck everything over, and people keep voting for them. Democrats don’t fix everything right away, and people refuse to vote for them. Such is the stupidity of the American public.

Oh and the Dodd-Frank act regulating Wallstreet. And saving the economy from the massive financial crash with the Recovery Act. And an act that extended how long after being fired someone can file for unemployment. And new tax legislation that had tax increases to help pay for the investment in the economy with the recovery act. And around 50 other pieces of legislation.

Plus the “shitty health care” you mentioned mandated insurance companies have to cover people with pre-existing conditions giving insurance to tens of millions of people. And extended Medicaid to tens of millions of people providing relatively cheap medical care by comparison to before. Free? No. But many went from having bills of multiple hundreds a month to just 50. Again, perfect? No. But a massive fucking improvement.

All that in the 2 years he had both houses. Not his entire first term. Much of it was incredibly influential even if not perfect. To say we got nothing out of it is misrepresenting both what we got and what we had before.

Edit: and increasing the minimum wage.

Here’s the link to the total Results of the primary election. If Bernie had more Votes he would have won. The facts are that not enough people got out to vote for him. He didn’t have anything stolen from him.

I was and I voted in the primaries in 2016. But not enough people voted for Bernie for him to win the nomination. He had over 3 and a half million fewer votes than Hilary. And only if all but 9 of the super delegates had went to him he would have gotten the nomination. Which others would have called undemocratic as he didn’t win the most votes.

How is getting the left out to vote in primaries to remake the democratic party doing the same thing? Right now they don’t get out and vote in primaries in enough numbers to change anything. Having them get out and vote in primaries en masse WOULD be doing something new.

Edit: you are abolustely right about the propaganda machine. It’s why I think there’s only two options, finding a way to remake the democratic party, or the country splits.

Their response was to drift right because those voters consistently vote. If the left consistently voted they would be represented in Congress.

And yes I think we can remake it. I think it’s our only chance. If the party switch could happen in the 60s, if the Republicans could accelerate into Trumpism in 6 years, then yes we can remake the Democratic party. We. Just. Have. To. Vote. And organize and such.

45 members out of 7500 is .006%. While that is a tiny amount of success, increasing that to a majority will take decades. The “third parties” in Congress are Independents which is not a formed party like Greens or the PLS like I was talking about. No actual third party has been elected to congress since 1937, according to your very link you provided. Of course I’m not counting Lieberman because his “Third party” was the Connecticut for Lieberman which was literally just for him.

So does that mean overthrowing the government? Does it mean starting a Civil War to establish a new Union? Would it mean the country splitting off into their own grouped together countries? What would a Second American Revolution look like? Because we have an idea of how you can remake the Democratic party. A second American Revolution in modern day needs an image of what it should look like if it is going to work.

For what it’s worth, I personally think you either remake the Democratic party, or the country will split.

While I get that, building the infrastructure of a new third party, or increasing an existing third parties infrastructure to the right size, is next to impossible unless you convince every single Democrat voter to move to the next one. That’s just not gonna happen. Statistically speaking, third parties will never win. And if you work on building that infrastructure, that will just guarantee Republicans winning until you convince enough people to abandon the Democrats which could take decades.

So then what’s the logical next step if those people want to be represented in government? You remake the Democratic party. The Republicans were remade post tea party in 6 years into the Trump party. The Democrats could be remade into an actually consistent and willing to fight far more effectively progressive party in 4 if we just work towards it and vote in the primaries in all elections over the next 4 years. It’s far more possible and a far quicker possibility. As long as we have elections going forward, that is, Trump could just cancel them.

By voting in the primaries. The RNC didn’t want Trump, they didn’t want all the shit that happened originally. It happened because people voted to put specific Republicans in office during primaries and in the general who helped change their party into the Trump machine it is today.

We can do the same. You reform by actually voting in primaries.

The Tea Party movement was a hostile takeover of the Republican party be the far right that didn’t complete until Trump in 2016. They literally had a guy who created a pledge for Republicans to sign that said they’d never vote for new taxes.

Progressives and other democrats that are further left NEED a Tea Party moment. The base is done being taken advantage of and we need to reshape the party and do a country wide approach. And progressives and others on the left need to actually get out to vote in the primaries in 2026 to be able to do this. Kick out the old guard, they’ve repeatedly failed. We can do so much better

And for those that say go for a third party, it is far easier to remake the Democratic party, an existing party with an existing infrastructure, than it is to convince people to vote for a third party that is either new or has existed for a while and never been successful. The green party, the PLS, are distractions. Put that effort into changing the democratic party.

Always remember that the only time in American history the left had significant power was under FDR because we were consistent voters for the Democrats and voted for New Deal Democrats instead of the old guard. If we want to be taken seriously, pull a Tea party.

/Rant over

Yes and that was shit and they should have figured out a way to do some kind of primary. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be a real primary in 2028 or that there won’t be congressional primaries in 2026, which the congressional ones was what I was talking about. The only thing that would guarantee not having primaries is an official Dictatorship being created and the dissolution of congress and Trump being declared King or saying there will be no more elections.

Last year they didn’t really have presidential primaries because of an Incumbent, something both parties do all the time. But there were still Congressional primaries. And local primaries. Saying they’ll get rid of primaries when there was a reason to not have a presidential one, even if you disagree with that reason, is very much misunderstanding how primaries work.

Any of the ones who are upset about Progressives pushing them to act like an opposition party needs to be primaried and kicked out, if they can’t be convinced. We need more primary challengers to actually change the party, like the republicans have and continue to do.

This is fucking hilarious. For months post Trump getting shot at, Alex Jones was saying that Trump was gonna have his plane shot down by a missile. He claimed that he had a dream about it that was actually a vision from God and that he hoped the Trump team was listening so they could prepare. To find out there was an actual worry is pretty fucking funny. Alex probably knew there was a worry, because he’s an insider for Trump, and decided to do his characteristic prediction saying it was from God so that if it happened, he proves he has prophetic powers even more than he says he already does.

Just so ya know, @Breadsmasher mods a sub called the_Donald (which I assume is what you’re talking about) that is dedicated to documenting trumps crimes. NOT a pro-trump sub.

I highly recommend clicking through when you find something like that, often it’s a terrible sub but there’s also times when it’s not what you’d expect. As for the other sub, that’s called lemmyDrama, which is just about lemmy drama, like how r/subredditdrama on reddit is about drama. So I wouldn’t call that trolling. But that might just be my opinion on what trolling is.