Full text of statement:
"It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them. First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well. While the Democratic leadership defend the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right.
Today, while the very rich are doing phenomenally well, 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and we have more income and wealth inequality than ever before. Unbelievably, real, inflation-accounted-for weekly wages for the average American worker are actually lower now than they were 50 years ago.
Today, despite an explosion in technology and worker productivity, many young people will have a worse standard of living than their parents. And many of them worry that Artificial Intelligence and robotics will make a bad situation even worse.
Today, despite spending far more per capita than other countries, we remain the only wealthy nation not to guarantee health care to all as a human right and we pay, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. We, alone among major countries, cannot even guarantee paid family and medical leave.
Today, despite strong opposition from a majority or Americans, we continue to spend billions funding the extremist Netanyahu government’s all out war against the Palestinian people which has led to the horrific humanitarian disaster of mass malnutrition and the starvation of thousands of children.
While the big money interests and well paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign? Will they understand the pain and political alienation that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing? Do they have any ideas as to how we can take on the increasingly powerful Oligarchy which has so much political power? Probably not.
In the coming weeks and months those of us concerned about grassroots democracy and economic justice need to have some very serious political discussions.
Stay tuned."
sheepdog
This might be the last chance if even there is one. No centrist Democrat should ever be looked at again until this is corrected.
The Democrats are incapable of moving left, they draw their resources and legitimacy from their donors.
There needs to be a purge within the Party. These corporate freaks and consultants and their pet politicians must be expelled from the Party. Democrats can’t allow them to call the shots anymore.
Vote in your down ballot primaries, and volunteer hard to get progressives in. People in those state/local offices often tend to move upwards in the party
Consider also running for office yourself https://runforsomething.net/
People in those state/local offices often tend to move upwards in the party
name a time this has worked to get a progressive into a meaningfully high office (and they didn’t immediately capitulate and throw the working class under the bus in whole or in part)
Why insist on continuing to spend all your focus and resources on participating in a system that is functioning exactly as it was designed to, and expecting different results?
No. The Democratic party deserves extinction. Can’t say who or what would replace them, but they’re dead.
Lol, Americans.
Wasn’t it the Republican party that needed to be destroyed last cycle in your allowed thought-hamster wheel? I wonder what it’ll be next cycle.
Maybe time to expand your solutions beyond that?
Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle.
-Vladimir Lenin
The Dems are failures, plain and simple, but there is a path forward that doesn’t involve them. It is the number 1 duty of leftists to get organized, and read theory. I can provide an intro list to Marxism if you want, but Blackshirts and Reds is an excellent primer. It helps us understand what fascism is, who it serves, where it comes from, and how we can banish it forever.
Sure but conservative/right supporters are like drones, they love uniting under one guy who does all the thinking for them and orders them around. They basically love a king.
On the other hand any group that gets invested in left leaning politics quickly splits into fractions or resists uniting with others mainly because they like to think for themselves and by thinking produce their own ideas. And ideas are like babies, especially if you spend a lot of time perfecting and nurturing it. It is hard to accept that others’ might be better or at least a synthesis is required.
So in my opinion, the left will always have a much harder time getting organised than the right.
I think it is short sighted and kind of dehumanizing to assume they are drones who are merely waning to unite under one person. we can look at the reasons they chose to do this, the material realities that caused them to vote that way. You can only sway people if you understand why they do something so you can convence them to solve it in a better way
Why do you believe right-wingers think the way they do? Is it genetic, or is it perhaps something else? Why do you see Left-wingers as “free thinkers” yet too individualist to show solidarity?
I think reading on Marxism would be an excellent step forward for you. Left-wingers splinter into factionalism because they don’t all want the same thing, or have disagreements on what should be a consistent stance. People’s ideas stem from their social relations and material conditions, it isn’t genetic.
Part of the problem with this approach is that it assumes people aren’t already educated about what they want or their best interests.
Given the numbers now compared to 2020, I think it’s clear the American people just want fascism.
Being able to define and demonstrate what fascism is doesn’t help if most people are like “Cool yeah I want that”.
This feels like you are just assuming they want to be the “bad guys” It is more benifical to hear why they did what they did, and them we can talk and educate them out. Lots of this voting is based on fear, and we need to learn how to aswage there fear, or even meet there basic needs. What this ends up as is one side gave false promises they could solve this, the other said it was fine. Who would you chose if you could barily afford to put food on the table the one saying you will be fed or the one saying that there is no issue
Most people do not want fascism, most people want a way out of a dying Capitalist hellscape. Some think Trump is the answer, which is wrong, of course, but it’s helpful to know that non-voters outnumber Trump Voters and Harris Voters. People want out and are tired of the games.
I am not sure they do want that. I mean even a fairly uneducated person would not see a classic run of the mill billionaire as a way out of capitalism. Perhaps it is just a defense reflex, people are known to favor authoritative figures during times of hardship and crisis.
Trump campaigned specifically catering to blue-collar workers with a right-wing populist narrative, the proletariat is squeezed and hopeless right now.
If most people didn’t want fascism, they didn’t care enough to do anything about it. The fascist vote won, I don’t know what other takeaway there is than that.
Do you want cool & slow fascism or hot & spicy? That was the choice.
Cool and slow 100%, easier to kill before it gets hot.
But I’d argue that even if there was literally any other non-fascist (leftist even) candidate in Harris’s place, the American voters would still choose Trump. They don’t want help, they want to hurt the people they think are supposed to be hurt more than them.
That’s like reforming the Nazi party, by the time you’ve fixed the Democratic party you’ll have changed everything about it.
How do you purge 95% of a party and all of its power brokers and backers without just building a new party? It’s not like the capitalists came in and hijacked it, they were always one half of the American single-party state.
Those are the democratic party elite. We can no more remove them than remove one’s own head.
Unfortunately, I don’t think any of this bothers them. As long as politics is controlled by money, this is the ultimate destination for any major political party.
If Bernie Sanders and Jon Stewart run in 2028, we might have a chance to install people that would actually attempt to remove blatant bribery from politics. Otherwise, this is it.
Bernie’s gonna be in his 90s by then. He won’t run and I won’t blame him.
Dude litterally spent his entire life trying to help us. We consistently turned him down. He did all he could, the blame is not with him.
Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle.
-Vladimir Lenin
Bernie and Jon Stewart will be too old by then. More than that, ceding defeat without fighting to begin with is the height of foolishness. It is the number 1 duty of leftists to get organized, and read theory. I can provide an intro list to Marxism if you want, but Blackshirts and Reds is an excellent primer. It helps us understand what fascism is, who it serves, where it comes from, and how we can banish it forever.
Jon Stewart is not that old. He’s only 61.
That’s still above retirement age, he shouldn’t have to run, nor am I in the mindset that he would be enough to course correct.
Obviously he shouldn’t have to run, but he’s not remotely too old. He’s sharp, has experience dealing with the political system (and succeeding), is extremely knowledgeable and insightful about the state of society, etc.
He doesn’t want to be a politician, though, so it’s a moot point.
Oh fuck right off Bernie. You solidified yourself as one of their satellites when you went down without a fight after super tuesday 2020. I remember you standing side by side with them lying to us about Gaza just fucking weeks ago. Retire. All the good that could come out of you is tapped.
Well the Democratic Party learn their lesson? No.
They need to be abandoned in order for us to move forward.
We need a different voting system or it will just keep repeating the same situation indefinitely.
And that isn’t going to be voted into existence
Liberals love to say that they just need a different voting system to fix every issue in the US.
And then fail to tell people how to get this new system when the two main parties don’t want it. Because obviously the Democrats and the Republicans don’t want to change it, it goes to their advantage.
Yup, just jumping to the obvious end goal without talking about the hard part of getting there.
To solve climate change, we simply must stop consuming fossil fuels. Easy as /s
Voting can’t get us there. I recommend reading Reform or Revolution and The State and Revolution for why reform is pretty much impossible and revolution is necessary.
Narrator voice record scratch … They didn’t learn.
The xenophobic finger-pointing continues.
all out war against the Palestinian people
Say the ‘g’ word - genocide, you king cuck coward
What should we expect of a Genocide denier
no no they will not
In the coming weeks and months those of us concerned about grassroots democracy and economic justice need to have some very serious political discussions.
Fucking tell them Bernie. Too many people are still in denial about the truth of that happened in this election. Hint: It’s not Americans hating women. It’s not Americans hating black people. It’s not Harris being handed an impossible situation. It’s not whatever excuse you came up with or heard (seriously why do people feel the need to make excuses for political candidates’ failure).
They always will fail, they serve the same donors and bourgeois powers as the republicans. That’s why they threw away their voterbase and catered with Liz Cheney. Marx and Lenin are vindicated by the passage of time. They were not clairvoyant, they just accurately analyzed the systems around them and saw what necessarily follows from their directions.
Everyone, get organized, read theory, learn self-defense and self-sufficiency. A good primer is Blackshirts and Reds. Defend yourselves and protect each other. I can provide an intro list to Marxism if anyone wants to read up on theory.
Betteridge’s Law says they won’t
Populism clearly wins elections, which is why the Democrats would shun a platform like this
Why win elections when you can lose elections and have your policies implemented anyway?
No, fuck no. Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory is like, their whole deal.
Marx and Lenin are vindicated every time the dems fumble what was supposed to be an easy election.
So they picked the worst possible option? That doesn’t even make sense. I doubt he would have won either at the time, even if he wasn’t sabotaged. Do you think the RNC wouldn’t have gone after him worse?
Where the fuck was this version of Sanders for the last 8 fucking years.
Haven’t been paying attention, eh?
You certainly haven’t, between defending Israel and actively supporting Biden’s agenda, Sanders hasn’t expressed any thoughts left of center in a while.
you have to work within your environment. you can’t just go full leftist in the backwoods redneck country that is the USA and expect to get anywhere. making concessions is necessary. but people fail to understand the nuance required to play the game. the second you’re an “outsider” you’ll be cast aside by the prevailing parties - exactly what happened to Sanders when he assumed most people were with him. social media has created echo chambers that reflect a mirage of what we want to see, not what’s actually there.
As a communist in a redneck area, nearly the entirety of the redneck South are leftists. They don’t think they are. They need some social theory that is happening slowly. But their core values are ripped straight from the manifesto, right down to beating their bosses ass for pulling some dumb shit.
You genuinely don’t need to make concessions. You need to be honest, seem honest, and genuinely recognize the problems people have, not pretend they don’t exist. Every single person I’ve talked to, and I do mean Trump supporting, flag bearing, lifted truck little shits, supports Medicare for all. They fully support free college and trade school. Hell a decent number support ubi, even for minorities. They don’t support the words, the labels for those policies, because of propaganda and dem failures, but they fully support the policies if you explain them wholly without buzzwords. Hell I’ve helped convert a few to union men.
And I’m not lucky or in an abnormal area… Polls have repeated showed left wing policies( or at least as left wing as Sanders) are incredibly, ridiculously popular. Medicare for all, when you don’t use that term, gets 70-80% approval in polls depending on how well it’s explained in said poll.
You, like all neoliberal excuses, have no idea what the working class of America is like, which is amazing because statistically you’re a part of it.
You genuinely don’t need to make concessions.
So backwoods white Christian nationalists are okay with abortion? Gay marriage? Women’s rights? Interracial marriage? Muslims Immigrants? Mexican immigrants? People not having a full grasp of the English language?
You, like all neoliberal excuses, have no idea what the working class of America is like, which is amazing because statistically you’re a part of it.
You’re attacking a straw man brother. You have no idea who I am, where I came from or what experiences I have. You’ve also painted a picture that doesn’t match reality based on your own experience. The world isn’t as shallow as your singular perspective nor is it black or white.
Endorsing every move the dems made.
Present and speaking similarly.
Too true. Listening to Sanders from the 80s is the same as listening to him today. It’s shocking how little his views and rhetoric have changed while being absolutely correct from the beginning.
Was gonna say. Standing up for folks, yelling at the same empty room he’s been yelling at for 40 years. Dude is nothing if not consistent. If anything Bernie has moved to the right in the last 4 decades, and he’s still the left most politician we have
There’s C-Span videos online of him doing interviews before he became a US senator, and it’s interesting how the problems then are still relatable now. We’ve gotten better at kicking cans down roads and blaming each other instead of tackling the issues head on.
Honestly kudos to the man for standing up for his beliefs in the face of overwhelming American stupidity for this long. I’d have definitely folded.
I’m fucking tuned Bernie.
We need a revolution, the democrats are a failure.
