More Democrats need to grow more of a spine!

[Hardkill]

Many including myself are disappointed that a number of Democrats in the Senate including Schumer did not fight hard on the House passed GOP for keeping the government open that have a bunch of terrible provisions for the people including Medicaid cuts, giving Trump more power to unilaterally impose more tariffs billion dollars in cuts to domestic programs like public education funding and community health centers, etc.:

 

Also, why was Gavin Newsom chumming up with Charlie Kirk: 

 

[Elliott]

@Hardkill you'd rather shut down the government, cutting all discretionary spending? Federal courts would close and trump would be able to do whatever he wants.

 

The Newsom interviews were great interviews.

[DocWatts]

Every single Democrat who capitulated on this spending bill needs to be tossed out of Congress, and replaced by fighting Dems who are willing to stand up to fascism.

Jeffries and Schumer are content to be the controlled opposition - leadership of the House and Senate needs to be wrenched away from them. We need to begin building a coalition around a viable alternative for both chambers - whether that's AOC, Chris Murphy,or someone else. No more Vichy Democrats in Congress - the stakes are too high to cede any more ground to the criminals who are doing a hostile takeover of our country.

'The Treacherous Ten' :

Edited March 15 by DocWatts

[Leo Gura]

@DocWatts Bro, that's not gonna work.

You're not gonna replace all those people with AOCs.

When you demonize the Blue Dog Dems, you just end up weakening the Dems overall and then MAGA wins.

This is one of the biggest misunderstandings of progressives. The country is not gonna join in your far-leftism. Even with MAGA.

Leftists attacking Newsom is really foolish. He's one of the only Dems with enough strength to beat a Trump. Leftists just do not understand pragmatic compromise.

Edited March 15 by Leo Gura

[Hardkill]

43 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

@DocWatts Bro, that's not gonna work.

You're not gonna replace all those people with AOCs.

When you demonize the Blue Dog Dems, you just end up weakening the Dems overall and then MAGA wins.

This is one of the biggest misunderstandings of progressives. The country is not gonna join in your far-leftism. Even with MAGA.

Leftists attacking Newsom is really foolish. He's one of the only Dems with enough strength to beat a Trump. Leftists just do not understand pragmatic compromise.

It doesn't have to be all AOC or Bernie Sanders types. We need more Democrats out there who have the mindset of fighting back like hell with a powerful populist message like FDR or LBJ. 

Even the Pod Save America Bros are getting very concerned that too many within the Democratic party still have too much of this mindset of compromise to the point of making compromises with MAGA. That's unacceptable.

Otherwise, I fear that many Democratic party base, moderates, and Independents will decide to just stay home and not vote in 2026 or in 2028 and let the Republicans win again with their right-wing "populist" messaging.

[Leo Gura]

8 minutes ago, Hardkill said:

Otherwise, I fear that many Democratic party base, moderates, and Independents will decide to just stay home and not vote in 2026 or in 2028 and let the Republicans win again

But that's exactly what you're creating.

When you trash the Blue Dog Dems, they don't change, instead you poison the progressive half of the party from voting.

This is exaclty how the Palestine issue was misused by people like Krystal Ball and Finkelstein.

Edited March 15 by Leo Gura

[Lyubov]

Damned if you do damned if you don’t. People been saying dems need to grow a pair and stand up to Republican corruption since Obama… not happening  

[Leo Gura]

Beating a strong opponent requires unity.

Divide and conquer.

Edited March 15 by Leo Gura

[Hardkill]

12 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

But that's exactly what you're creating.

When you trash the Blue Dog Dems, they don't change, instead you poison the progressive half of the party from voting.

Schumer is not a Blue Dog Dem like Manchin or Sinema were. He and all of the other senators who just voted for that GOP bill all come from blue-leaning to solid blue states. Fetterman ran as a progressive and is still a Bernie Bro.

Also, if this wasn't a problem right now then why are Dan Pfieffer, Jon Favreau, Tommy Vietor, and Jon Lovett who are all former Obama officials and their good friend Brian Tyler Cohen saying that the Democratic leadership having been ceding the ground with regarding to the messaging war?

8 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Beating a strong opponent requires unity.

I totally agree. A big reason why Dems lost in 2016 and in 2024 was because of how divided and weakened the party were during those years. Yes, they eventually unified under Hillary by the 2016 convention and they eventually unified under Harris by the convention 2024, but the damage was already done during each of those times.

However, the Democrats can no longer run on the kind that basically says "Trumpism is bad." They need to run on a unifying message that also is forward-looking and for the people of the country like say "The Great Construction" or "New Nationalism." 

 

Edited March 15 by Hardkill

[Leo Gura]

21 minutes ago, Hardkill said:

Schumer is not a Blue Dog Dem like Manchin or Sinema were. He and all of the other senators who just voted for that GOP bill all come from blue-leaning to solid blue states. Fetterman ran as a progressive and is still a Bernie Bro.

Yeah, but they are not leftists either. And never will be.

Quote

Also, if this wasn't a problem right now then why are Dan Pfieffer, Jon Favreau, Tommy Vietor, and Jon Lovett who are all former Obama officials and their good friend Brian Tyler Cohen saying that the Democratic leadership having been ceding the ground with regarding to the messaging war?

Dude, these guys are all far left.

Quote

However, the Democrats can no longer run on the kind that basically says "Trumpism is bad." They need to run on a unifying message that also is forward-looking and for the people of the country like say "The Great Construction" or "New Nationalism." 

I got the perfect killer campaign theme for Dems to win in 2028:

"Defeat the oligarchs!"

Dems gotta become the anti-oligarch party.

This will be the most energizing issue by 2028.

Edited March 15 by Leo Gura

[Hardkill]

57 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Yeah, but they are not leftists either. And never will be.

They may not be as far to the left as Sanders or Warren are, but they are still liberals. Besides, why did they have to vote for that awful bill right away instead of trying to negotiate first with other side? A lot of people are going to be hurt by this.

57 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Dude, these guys are all far left.

What? I am surprised you say that. Out of all of the progressive commentators out there on the internet and social media, those guys have been the most supportive of the establishment Democrats and have given the most reasonable left-leaning takes on politics. Even you said a while back that they aren't too populist, too anti-mainstream, or too fringe like TYT or Secular Talk are.

57 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

I got the perfect killer campaign theme for Dems to win in 2028:

"Defeat the oligarchs!"

Dems gotta become the anti-oligarch party.

This will be the most energizing issue by 2028.

That's actually not bad.

Well, the Democrats better come up with a solid message like that and make that front and center in their campaign by 2026 or 2028.

I will say though that one silver lining is that it looks like the party will be doubling down on economic populism instead of "moderating" their stances according to the current consensus of Dem strategists/pundits. Let's hope that they really mean that.

Edited March 15 by Hardkill

[Leo Gura]

10 minutes ago, Hardkill said:

What? I am surprised you say that. Out of all of the progressive commentators out there on the internet and social media, those guys have been the most supportive of the establishment Democrats and have given the most reasonable left-leaning takes on politics. Even you said a while back that they aren't too populist, too anti-mainstream, or too fringe like TYT or Secular Talk are.

They are still very left relative to the rest of the country.

The problem is that leftists are so out of touch with how conservative and traditional most of the country is because they only listen to themselves.

[Hardkill]

33 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

They are still very left relative to the rest of the country.

The problem is that leftists are so out of touch with how conservative and traditional most of the country is because they only listen to themselves.

I get that, but see this is what I've never been fully clear on.

On the one hand, people like the Pod Bros and BTC, along with, obviously, TYT, Secular Talk, and the Majority Report, are all part of the progressive movement in our country. The purpose of the movement have been to fight against MAGA extremists, corrupt neoliberals, and the corporate oligarchy, and to push the Democratic Party further to the left or back toward its New Deal roots.

On the other hand, I still wonder if the progressive movement has been backfiring in the long term:

 

Edited March 15 by Hardkill

[DocWatts]

4 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

@DocWatts Bro, that's not gonna work.

You're not gonna replace all those people with AOCs.

When you demonize the Blue Dog Dems, you just end up weakening the Dems overall and then MAGA wins.

This is one of the biggest misunderstandings of progressives. The country is not gonna join in your far-leftism. Even with MAGA.

Leftists attacking Newsom is really foolish. He's one of the only Dems with enough strength to beat a Trump. Leftists just do not understand pragmatic compromise.

I %100 agree on the need for national unity and strategic compromise. It's not about being as far Left as possible, it's about having convictions that you're willing to fight for, and a vision of the country that inspires people. In theory you can do that from both the Center and the Left, but at the present moment the progressive wing of the party are almost the only ones doing so - and that needs to change.

(Notice that I didn't say 'progressives' in my previous post - I said 'fighting Dems').

What current Democratic leadership is doing isn't strategic compromise - it's foolishly ceding ground to fascism with nothing to show for it, out of mistaken belief that fascist criminals will meet you halfway. It's like thinking that if you're nice to the guy claiming to be the 'wallet inspector', you'll get your wallet back sooner.

Part of the reason that MAGA won was that they had a vision of the country that inspired their base - a fascist vision sure, but 'Make American Great Again' worked because Trump voters could project whatever it was they thought that made America 'great'. 

What the current Democratic leadership is projecting to the country is that they're too feckless and weak to stand up to fascism. 'We can't fight for you because we're in the minority' is objectively terrible messaging that borders on Vichy style complicity.

There's a reason that in my hometown of Warren, MI over 10,000 crammed into a High School to a Bernie Sanders rally when it's not an election year. Bernie is speaking to people's actual concerns and desire for real change - progressive economic policies are popular with the American people, and Bernie is an expert at marketing them in a way that makes them seem pragmatic and reasonable.

Restoring the rule of law, No Oligarchs No Kings, and protecting popular social programs like Social Security and Medicaid that are a life and death issue for tens of millions of Americans that Dems can leverage to produce a 'rally around the flag' effect when %60 of the country is living paycheck to paycheck and can't afford a $400 emergency without going into debt.

"Trump is a puppet for billionaire oligarchs that are waging economic warfare against you and your family" is not only truthful, it's more unifying than running on abstract, vacuous ideals like an 'opportunity economy '.

Kamala ran on 'protecting democracy', and it didn't work (keep in mind I'm writing this as someone who canvassed for her, and desperately tried to help her win). The idea that national unity comes from the Democratic Party becoming Republicans-lite is a losing strategy.

Future Dems need to run on 'here's how we're going to make your lives better.' Own the fact that they're the party of FDR. Be proud of it, damnit. Offer Americans a second New Deal that will be transformative for the %60 of the country that's living paycheck to paycheck. Messaging needs to shift from "we can't get any legislation passed" to "we're not going to get everything we want due to Trump and his corrupt cronies blocking aid for you and your family, but we're going to fight like hell for it."

Edited March 15 by DocWatts

[DocWatts]

3 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

I got the perfect killer campaign theme for Dems to win in 2028:

"Defeat the oligarchs!"

Dems gotta become the anti-oligarch party.

This will be the most energizing issue by 2028.

Hard agree.

This is a pic from Bernie's 'Fighting Oligarchy' tour from my home town with close to 10,000 people in attendance. (I'm in that crowd!).

And below that is some of the messaging I've been creating for the protests I've been attending - 'No Oligarchs. No Kings. Restore The Rule Of Law.'

Edited March 15 by DocWatts

[Apparition of Jack]

3 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Beating a strong opponent requires unity.

Divide and conquer.

This is why I made a thread about allying with Christian Democrats. I think disaffected conservatives (like the Lincoln Project) are a completely slept on demographic who’ll be key to defeating Trump.

[Leo Gura]

44 minutes ago, DocWatts said:

 

Nice! 

[Elliott]

The spending bill only cuts $13B, that's not much, medicaid is $600B for comparison. And the debt ceiling bill is still not passed. 

The Republicans won the majority in the election and you guys don't expect cuts, AT ALL? You people are authoritarians.

Edited March 15 by Elliott

[DocWatts]

3 hours ago, Apparition of Jack said:

This is why I made a thread about allying with Christian Democrats. I think disaffected conservatives (like the Lincoln Project) are a completely slept on demographic who’ll be key to defeating Trump.

100%. Some of the best messaging I've seen has been from the Lincoln Project, and from Christians who are disgusted by Trump.

The project then is to build a popular front between the Left the Center (including both the Center-Left and the Center-Right) against fascism.

'No Oligarchs. No Kings. Restore the Rule Of Law.' is one way of doing that.

Edited March 15 by DocWatts

[DocWatts]

Also, since Blue Dog Dems were brought up, Blue Dogs don't have to be spineless and unimaginative - the current mayor of Detroit, Mike Duggan, is great example of how they can have have both convictions and be a creative and empathic force for change that inspires people.

(Detroiters such as myself generally agree that Dugan is the best mayor we've had in decades).

 

Edited March 15 by DocWatts