Progressive insurgency in the Democratic Party keeps growing
Sure, I know most of you have completely given up on the Dems.
Nevertheless, it's still a good thing by anyone's measure to see the Democratic establishment forced to have to publicly fight it's own base's demands for reform.
The coalition of college Democrats chapters pledging to #BoycottDCCC has grown to 75 chapters nationwide. And now, we're asking for a meeting with @RepCheri after she backed out of a meeting with progressive groups last week. Read more here --> https://t.co/bGfW9veuqD @dccc pic.twitter.com/kuGubjzB32
— Harvard Democrats (@HarvardDems) May 20, 2019
Led by the Harvard College Dems, more than 70 chapters of the College Democrats of America, the youth outreach arm of the Democratic National Committee with over 100,000 college and university members, are boycotting the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee after the group decided to implement a new policy that would protect incumbents from primary challenges. And the DCCC won’t even meet with the College Democrats over the change.
...
College Democrats can make or break an election. They're one of the largest groups of people who canvass and phone-bank for candidates, they do massive voter-registration drives on college campuses, and they're a pipeline for future campaign managers, staffers, and politicians.
...Unsurprisingly, the DCCC isn’t budging to progressives asking for their policy to not be implemented; according to New York Magazine, “protecting incumbents is a core part of [DCCC’s] mission,” given that incumbents tend to win elections at higher rates than political newcomers. What is surprising, is that the leaders of the DCCC don’t seem to be taking College Democrats seriously, Hank Sparks, the president of the Harvard College Democrats, told MTV News, as the DCCC is still refusing to meet with the group. DCCC also did not respond to a request for comment from MTV News.
The arrogance and sense of entitlement by the Democratic Party establishment astounds even me.
Progressive groups are drawing up a list of 20 corporate Dems in blue districts to knock off next year. If they come anywhere close to success, it would put the Fear Of Gawd into the arrogant f*cks in the Democratic leadership.
But in an early tabulation by The Associated Press, there were 260 declared House Democratic challengers through May this year. Of those, 103, or 40%, were in districts with sitting Democrats, not GOP-held or open seats.
...Those most mentioned include Lipinski and Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas, among Congress’ few anti-abortion Democrats. Activists’ hit list also includes Reps. Stephen Lynch and Richard Neal of Massachusetts, chair of the House Ways and Means Committee.The New York City area seems ground zero for possible targets. They include Democratic Reps. Yvette Clarke, Kathleen Rice, Tom Suozzi and Carolyn Maloney, Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, who’s playing a central role in Democrats’ investigations into Trump.
“We need to focus on defeating President Trump, keeping the House and gaining the Senate. This is just taking away from that,” said Lipinski.
OK, admit it. If a bunch of corporate Dems are complaining that the progressive insurgency is drawing attention away from Russiagate and toward actual representation, can anyone here say that this is a bad thing?
Another measuring stick for the progressive insurgency is the Democratic Socialists of America, which has gone from 6,000 members in 2015 to 60,000 in 2019, and the number of local chapters had increased from 40 to 181.
Just a few weeks ago five members of the (DSA) won seats on Chicago’s City Council.
Comments
Reform won't do dick to change anything.
And since there's no labor movement or a Soviet Union to scare the shit out of the pigs, there will be NO concessions from them. None.
They might let a few DSA controlled opposition candidates win some local offices, but be honest, do you really think they're going to let actual working people or real lefties in general have any say? No. They'd sooner throw elections with identity virtue signaling than give up their gravy train.
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
The Soviet Union had nothing to do with the state of Labor
in the US. Never did.
I don't think you're interpreting the history of Cold War 1.0 correctly.
We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.
So you're saying
There weren't any fellow travelers among the labor organizers of the 1930s?
" In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and is generally considered to have been a bad move. -- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy "
No, not all.
I am saying that the "capitalist pigs" did not fear the Soviet Union and Capital's concessions to Labor during the post-war "golden age" had absolutely zero to do with fear of a Bolshevik revolution or the Red Army.
We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.
I Think They Were Pretty Scared During the Depression.
Seems that much was done to save Capitalism from the Commies by ensconcing some Socialist leveling policies into the body politic.
The political body has treated it as an invasive growth ever since.
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
It's already done things
It's changed the debate.
It's forced the establishment to play defense.
It's given media attention to people it would normally ignore.
And that's only with an off-year election. 2020 will bring out nearly twice as many voters.
You are free to be as cynical as you want. But the facts on the grounds are different from "It's hopeless. Nothing will ever change."
I don't think he's saying it's hopeless it'll never change,
I think he's saying trying to reform the democratic party won't work and that we need an independent working class movement to achieve real progress. The more people that realize that, the more hope we'll have.
And really, HARVARD democrats?! LOL.
I hear you
And it's probably true, but...
1) no one can be 100% certain that it's true, and
2) there will be no independent working class movement until the other options are exhausted. People don't go from apathetic to marching in the streets without a middle step.
150 years of trying to work thru the duopoly isn't enough?
I hear what you're saying too but that's kind of funny to me. It's a point I've been trying to make by pulling out comments from the past from the likes of Debs and Smedley Butler. Imo and many others, we have exhausted this option of trying to reform either of these two political parties after a century and a half plus of trying, it's as near 100% certainty as it gets.
The same thing is happening in Europe, more and more are waking to the fact that western representative government is failing and/or has failed. And we know scientifically and by common sense, this is not democracy and never will be until we make major changes.
Real change HAS happened
The New Deal was a significant change.
You seem to be saying Revolution Or Bust.
Yeah, because voting and begging capitalists
for the tiny reforms that will do next to nothing and be undone in a decade worked out so well the last time we did it.
Case in point: Obamacare, a Republican idea with the so-called public option totally removed and Medicaid Expansion practically undone by the 9 kings at the Supreme Court. Expansion of our forever wars from 2 to 7. Massive coddling of the richest assholes and corporations in the United States after they spent nearly 30 years raping the world economy of everything of value at that point. More jobs lost to outsourcing and automation, replaced with shit-wage service jobs purely for the amusement of owner and executive pigs alike. Obama sucked capitalist dick instead of executing every last one of them. Executives too. They all deserve it.
Am I cynical? You're damned right. Hard not to be when you spend your entire life being lied to time and time again by authority figures who only give a fuck about their own pockets.
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
Not just Obamacare either,
there is no chance in hell for a nationalized, i.e., socialist, health care system under this duopoly political system completely controlled by the capitalists. The carrot being dangled by the democratic party is fool's gold and they know it. The democratic party will actually set back efforts to achieve what is the only answer to this issue. So backing the party is in effect backing a losing deal.
I don't want a monolithic national health system
I want Medicare for everyone and paying 100% not 80% so the damn insurance companies can eat at the trough.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
So far, that's not on the menu.
We're talking the same thing, a non-profit state
run health care system. What te democrats will "compromise" to is probably going to make Obamacare look good. Notice the key words to know they're going to save the capitalist system, "pre-existing conditions". Iow, there is no reason to talk about pre-existing conditions with a nationalized system, only for tweaking the current capitalist for profit system.
At this point, I think they're so stuck between a rock and a hard place, that I don't expect anything for years, certainly not until after the next presidential election, which they're already strongly signaling. And then, who knows. That will be well over a decade since Obamacare, that's how this goes.
No! Not state run!
That's national VA. State PAID! Basically wage tax paid monlithic state insurance. The thing to watch for is reimbursement rates.
There are two opposite tendencies:
1. Keep rates low so taxes are low. This leads to providers leaving or cheating when rates are too low. We've seen this with Medicaid,
2. Reimbursement inflation in exchange for fat "campaign contributions" or under the table envelopes from the AMA, drug producers, for-profit hospitals ... Ordinary corruption.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
Here's what i consider minimally acceptable:
A. Nobody will be bankrupted by medical bills for ordinary and reasonable care -- including bizarre complications arising from common medical needs (e.g., repairing a broken leg).
B. Nobody need be reluctant to seek care for fear of receiving a substantial medical bill even if it turns out the problem were minor.
C. No matter where one travels in the United States, if one needs to obtain care one can do so, and:
a. It will cost exactly the same thing that it would cost if one had required the same care at home.
b. There is no additional paperwork required by the patient. I hand them my medical insurance card, and everything is taken care of, exactly if I had become ill or injured at home.
There are probably others I could add, but I can say without giving it any hard thought that if you favor a system or scheme that doesn't satisfy these four basic principles, your scheme is not, in my opinion, an acceptably civilized approach to providing healthcare to the people of our society.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
As Jimmie Dore often says "Dems are paid to lose"
Ain't that thew truth. The only thing which will save the Democrat party is formaldehyde. They leadership are tone-deaf elitist corporate whores. Yet AOC often sounds like an idiot, despite mouthing progressive mantras such as M4A. So where have the new "radicals, such as Tlaib, Omar, and AOC in sponsoring legislation? They are Nowhere. It's all talk--and we know that talk is both cheap and full of, shall we say, verbal excrement.
Dems will be gone--going the way of the Whigs especially after a resounding Trump 2020 victory.
And Trump will win unless:
1. the economy tanks (possible)
2. we get into a new hot war.
Americans by and large want things done reflecting their needs and desires. Neither duopolistic cabal is doing that. People do not want to pay higher taxes to forestall the alleged oncoming ball of fire induced by man-made climate change. Citizens want their needs to be recognized in earnest, not smoothed over by Nervous Nancy, Chuckles or even AOC.
Dems are the walking dead.
"Concessions"
Personally, I'm not looking for concessions.
"Concessions", "letting us do something" ... those words come from the standpoint of giving one's power away to the establishment. It comes from seeing oneself as subservient and begging your masters to give power to you.
Of course they won't give up their power voluntarily. And I can guarantee that when the DNC appears to be making a concession, it's because they believe it's going to pay off for them. They're playing the same old games they've played for decades.
A hostile takeover doesn't beg for concessions from the owners. It takes control and forces the old management and ownership out. That's why it's called a "takeover".
That's what I understand the strategy of "DemEnter" to be. A hostile takeover. Will it work? I don't know. I don't count myself as a DemEnter person, although I think the more pressure we can put on the establishment from many angles, the better.
"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi
"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone
No concessions....
The lesser of evil is a concession. Concessions mean we lose. I totally agree with you.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
Warren can't be trusted
"I want to look good in front of Democrats"
"But yeah if the Saudis can finance my campaign against Trump, I'm totally on board."
The ruling classes need an extra party to make the rest of us feel as if we participate in democracy. That's what the Democrats are for. They make the US more durable than the Soviet Union was.
Warren was the one politician I paid attention to
...during the 2016 Democratic National Convention.
I found her speech and her behavior to be the most shocking of all. She led Obama's attempt at finance reform. Such a massive fake-out, designed to trick the low-info Democrats. I have nothing against her as a Democrat, but she is the worst kind of snake to have in your tent.
Warren was a republican for 50 years before she became
a democrat. When she was asked about it she said that she wasn't politically involved, but I think otherwise. She waited to join the democrats until they became the new republicans and the republicans went insane.
She is offering all kinds of progressive ideas, but where was she when Obama was in office? The democrats are passing all kinds of leftist legislation knowing full well that it will just die in the senate because of McConnell. He has sat on 100 bills passed by the house including a new dream act. But they passed on one that Trump said he'd sign after they offered him $25 billion for the wall. More kabuki.
Putin isn’t going to make you homeless or kill you or deny you health care.
Your government will allow it to happen though.
I don't trust any GOPuke, former and current.
Where exactly is Liz on Jayapal's M4A and the Green New Deal? Rec'd!!
Inner and Outer Space: the Final Frontiers.
Warren is another Trojan Horse just like Obama.
If she is the candidate, I will not vote for her even though I originally thought I would. The more she goes on, the more I dislike her. Snake in a Trojan Horse.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
Wow... I kind of liked Warren
Not a lot, but I didn't have her in the "down right evil" category. But if Neera Tanden is advocating for her then that pretty much says it all. If SHE thinks that Warren will "not be divisive" then at least Nerra Tanden thinks Warren is an establishment tool.
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
Kathleen Rice is anti
Kathleen Rice is anti-establishment, she was a leader of the movement to get rid of Pelosi as leader. Any movement to get rid of her will come from the establishment.
Clarke almost lost the primary last year. Veterans get reelected with low voter turn-outs, all the challengers have to do is increase turn-out, like happened with Ayanna Presley and AOC.
It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back. Carl Sagan
IIRC the people who tried to overthrow Pelosi
were even more to the right than she is and that's why lots of people decided to stay with her. I don't have anything to back this up with though. Just something I read something...
But Nancy's job is to keep everyone in line and not let any progressive policies get past her. I bet that even if Trump did something that was impeachable she still wouldn't do it. He's passing stuff that both parties have wanted for a very long time.
Putin isn’t going to make you homeless or kill you or deny you health care.
Your government will allow it to happen though.
Surely you jest
and I'm not calling you sherlie.
Nancy is an alcoholic whore. She would do nothing that inhibited her bender.
Rude and crude, yet no apologies to the greedy pelosi family.
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
Well there is that
Just in case anyone has forgotten about the things that Bush did....
Katrina alone should have gotten him impeached. Or what we did to Iraq and especially Fallujah. Or, or... but no. Nancy didn't think she should do that after she ran on doing just that.
Putin isn’t going to make you homeless or kill you or deny you health care.
Your government will allow it to happen though.
Let us not forget a lying sack of shit
[video:https://youtu.be/0K27oIJlAlA]
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
As I recall
there was no clear progressive name with solid backing in the D caucus to support against Pelosi. And this article confirms that most of her announced opponents were to her right. I recall only a small less-than-groundswell of voices on the left opposing her, barely enough to make a ripple on the media radar. Meanwhile Nancy made promises to a few prominent progressive Ds in the House, for increased progressive voices on key committees, and that about ended the chance for true progressives to oust her.
On impeachment, she is likely not going to move until the members in her caucus favoring reaches something closer to a majority, perhaps 75-80. Last I checked, the number was about 50 Ds favoring Impeachment hearings, or one quarter. Enough to make news but not enough to sway her, yet.
After the 2018 midterms, progressive Ds count for 40% of the D caucus, still not a majority but a great improvement.
A great improvement?
How can a majority of the D caucus be a great improvement?
Even counting progressives, you can't get to 40%.
Counting on D, it's a lost cause.
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
An increase of nearly 20
in the number of progressives in the House is a solid improvement. They now constitute 40% of the House members, the largest group by ideology, with moderate New Dems at 38%. The conservative Blue Dogs lost a number of seats and are dying off it appears, and good riddance to them.
There is also some overlap in supporting some progressive policies among several dozen New Dems, which is a hopeful sign going forward.
Clearly the ideological trend line is in favor of progressive policies at this time. Notice frontrunner Joe Biden is moving leftward, or trying to, and is de-emphasizing his mostly centrist/conservative history.
We're only in the 2d election cycle since Trump snuck into office, only the 2d where progressives, and some newly awoken WWC Ds, have begun to assert themselves at the grassroots level. We are already seeing good progress. Hardly the time to throw in the towel in despair.
Lots of the new Dems in the house are ex military
and ex intelligence people. This is a way to get the intelligence agency's agendas passed easier. This site covered this in detail when we first found out about it. Not many would be considered progressive IMO...
Putin isn’t going to make you homeless or kill you or deny you health care.
Your government will allow it to happen though.
I'm sort of optimistic
There's a base out there, and it's starting to realize that those in the leadership are going to do nothing for them. Interesting times.