Summary
Bernie Sanders criticizes the Democratic Party for neglecting the working class, leading to their recent election losses.
He highlights issues like economic inequality, job displacement, healthcare costs, and foreign policy as key concerns for the American people.
Sanders questions whether the Democratic leadership will address these issues or remain beholden to big money interests.
If he formed a new party with young, fresh faces, I’d vote for them regardless of how that affected whatever the DNC did. I feel like there’s enough similar sentiment that he could force change in the DNC
But the DNC has to shut down, because then it will just be a 50/25/25 split and that won’t work either.
50/25/25, huh? So that must account for Republican/Democrat/Left of Democrat -Where do you think the Libertarians stand in all of this? Do you think the Democrats lost this election because of third parties or was it because a significant chunk of former Democrat voters chose to stay home altogether? If former Democrat voters chose to stay home, then I ask you why?
Well, it’s because democrats are dumb and didn’t show up. Either way it would have been closer than last time.
That statement calls for self reflection. Maybe it’s not the disenfranchised, refuse to go further right voters aren’t the “dumb” ones. Insanity is doing the same things over and over, expecting different results. Maybe it’s time to roll up our shirt sleeves and pant legs and get to work for something better. We deserve it and we’re worth it, maybe it’s time to develop serious worth and stand on it, ten down.
I really don’t think that’s true anymore. Maybe looking at decades of political party data but I think the games kinda changed with MAGA taking repubs extreme and Dem’s going center-right. There are a lot of republicans who could find a home in the democratic party since we know 2028 will see a cult leader retiring and you know the Dem’s are gonna run an old white guy out of fear. I’m hoping another party can cause a splash that election cycle but I see it going blue and hopefully the infrastructure for this third-party progressive moment can become solid in local with sites on national.
I’m no longer holding out for election change. Oregon just voted against RCV, the push-back from changing the voting system is just too much for our set-in-stone political machine we have running now. I’m definitely gonna look into the data about why that went down though, a lot of opposition from Dems and Repubs in Alaska and Maine so would be interesting to see what coalesced.
There either won’t be a 2028 election or it will be a sham. They have control of the entire government. The constitution will change. The courts will be harder right. The ONLY things holding them back will be a senator or two philibustering (until it’s outlawed) and the senses of high military command.
Also since trump will have ultimate immunity in office he can simply ignore the constitution altogether without consequence. He won’t have to step down. As admitted he’ll be a dictator.
I don’t know what’s going to happen, but focusing on what you’re saying this early is only going to cause you panic when we need to be gathering our strength. We’ve seen from the MAGA movement that our democracy is fragile. The safeguards and protections that make everything "so difficult"tm to change these past decades aren’t necessarily that difficult after all.
I can see a few well established Dem’s like Bernie and AOC jumping aboard a progressive party movement disguised as a blue wave much like was overtaken on the right. We see that there is room to capture voters that didn’t turn out and from both parties, a small band CAN take over a movement if their dedicated enough.
It’s just unfortunate that it was someone on the right who first abandoned party-lined politics and showed you can tame a party while speaking to the base (again, it was only like 20% of the population). It really makes me think that Bernie should’ve handled the fiasco in Nevada and South Carolina differently during the 2016 primaries. No blame to him, and I’m not sure what lesson there is to be learned besides authoritarianism and narcissistic tendencies are a way to brute force yourself into politics. But, I would’ve loved to see Bernie politely take the gloves off and took it to the people to back him up as well like Trump did with his group (just not, you know, all murdery and dark).
What is strength gonna do if he literally does succeed in being a “dictator on day one” there is only one way to stop a fascist.
Oh yeah the way they did bernie dirty destroyed enthusiasm and that echos even today. The dems showed they don’t care for a populist movement.
Im not saying give up. Just be real and listen to what trump and the right is saying. They don’t shroud their intent anymore. They say it up front. Dictator day one.
We won’t see a restoring change come from a political party. Whether the goal is pushing the current political structures left or superceding them it must come from popular mobilization.
the Dem’s are gonna run an old white guy out of fear.
Hey that’s not fair, maybe they’ll tap Hillary to turn this around /s (I hope)
Don’t give them ideas!
Finally. Everybody on Lemmy has been sucking donkey dick so hard. They’re not gonna save you. Need to start looking elsewhere or force their hand. RCV will help do that.
RCV was on the ballot in 5 states and it failed.
Just gotta keep educating people about it, especially during times like this. A lot of people in power don’t want it, but some opposition is also cost related.
It’s the reality of first past the post. Third party voting is simply almost never an option. You’re mad at a natural law of the election system. Don’t hate the players, hate the game
If I hate the game, and the players are the ones with the power to change the rules of the game and choose not to, where does that leave me?
Exactly. No players, no game. We need to organize and plan.
It leaves you stuck in the system you have along with those players. You can vote third party, organize around a different election system, but don’t shit on people who see that as wasted effort at best and sabotage at worst. They’re not wrong, because it’s an all-or-nothing play. You’re shooting the moon. If you vote third party, you’d better be 100% sure they’re gonna win or you’re just wasting your vote you could have used to cancel a fascist’s vote. Don’t say “they choose not to” but realize you’re demanding they take a huge risk with small chance of success (zero chance if you don’t organize and just complain on the internet)
Then make the Democrat party the third party lol
Doesn’t matter as long as Republicans are #1.
I want the GOP third party where they belong.
Ha, if only
Well we lost the chance this year. Man I have never been so wrong about people coming out just to stop Trump. I would have loved to see the GOP eat each other.
evidently, as this election proved, it’s not like voting on the lesser of two evils worked either. better to vote for a third party who actually stands on the side of the people.
What does that do?
If the third party is actually able to represent the people better than one of the current two why can’t it be switched to it? It could start with local elections to then state level candidates, it wouldn’t be a switch out of the blue, most people wouldn’t even know it exists the first few elections (hell, just the amount of people googling if Biden had dropped out of the race on the day of elections shows how uninformed people can be) but the current state of the democratic party can’t stay, it either gets kicked out or it adapts because of competition
Because of FPTP, that means that the GOP will have the presidency for a long time because the Democrats vote would be split.
And if that is the case, you can be sure that no voting reform will happen, bringing back the two party system.
It’s the natural evolution of FPTP system.
The best case scenario would be for the Democratic party to prop up a political reform as one of their main issue, in the hope that the voters will give them the presidency, senate and house to do just that.
But the DNC would have to follow through will all of that if they get to that point, which probably won’t happen.
So yeah, it looks bleak no matter how you look at it.
That could force a change in the DNC, but the change would be to push them further to the right. The issue is that the right-wing party won the election. They got more than 50% of the total votes. So the democrats aren’t going to see splitting their own base as a viable pathway to victory. If a left-wing faction splitters off, then the DNC will be forced to try to capture more votes on the other side instead.
If the democrats won the election then we’d be in a situation where we can talk about pushing them further left. But when they lose, that’s not really an option. (Most of these strategy problems disappear with ranked choice voting… but I doubt the current government has any interest in pushing for that kind of change!)
I don’t think a lot of people offline think so much in red/blue and left/right. A working people’s party could peel voters from both parties, and bring in new voters. Starting right away I think a lot of wins could be made in the midterms at least locally if not nationally - maybe not with majorities but pluralities.
Hey Bernie:
Thanks for being a democratic hack for years and years. You rage against them and constantly try to dunk on them, but what’s your party affiliation? Oh yeah, that’s right, Democratic. Good job criticizing them while also being part of the problem.
Bernie sanders is the longest serving independant senator in united states history. Hes been criticizing the democratic party since the 1970s, you absolute muppet.
OK… so he’s been part of a party he feels is ineffectual and hasn’t solved anything since the 1970s?
Do you know what an independant is? Who would you prefer he caucus with? The gop?
Ask him, he’s seemingly the one very disappointed with the Democratic party.
Ok. Let me try again.
What would you do if you were bernie? Whats your course of action?
I would do the same thing: complain endlessly about the Democratic party while doing nothing to distance myself from them.
This is an inaccurate claim by Sanders. Biden was the first President to walk a picket line with striking workers.
With union negotiations, he was pretty balanced. He did come down on the railroad strikes some after both sides got stuck, but they did get improvements beyond what management wanted to give. With the ports, though, he stuck with the workers and forced management to negotiate by refusing to override the strike.
Could the Democrats do more? Sure. But they’re still recovering from the fever that took the party over with Clinton in '92. There are a lot of people who believe that win was a meaningful approval of the pro corporate but not racist Democratic Party platform, when in reality Clinton only won thanks to Perot.
I don’t know that there was any magic messaging that Harris could’ve deployed this time around. I’m not sure there was any likely alternative even from a short post-Biden primary that could’ve done better than her.
Trump has everyone thinking he has some magic way to boost salaries and lower prices. And he railed against the elites more stridently and apparently people believed him.
On the other hand Google saw a lot of traffic with people asking if Biden dropped out so who knows what could have been done to avoid Trump 2.
Bernie is becoming a serious issue for Democratic messaging. He’s in the senate, he KNOWS what Biden has done for the working class. And instead of helping to promote that message to his millions of followers, he’s rather virtue signal. It’s really a sick game man.
The voters proved your theory wrong. Working class voted Trump or stayed home. How you you explain that… Because whatever Biden did… 1) it was not enough and 2) Harris promised more of the same.
That the overwhelming majority of voters are not just uninformed, uncritical, and apathetic, but actually might be morons? I don’t know.
Biden and Harris both have been fairly active in supporting labor and trying to tackle corporate Greed. Harris regularly talked about anti-gouging laws as well as the other items mentioned already. Biden was the most pro-union president we’ve seen in decades, had a strong NLRB, and was responsible for appointing the most active and effective FTC head we’ve seen in ages.
There are many many issues with the democratic party, but holy shit, being less supportive of the working class than fucking Republicans is absolutely not one of them.
That the overwhelming majority of voters are not just uninformed, uncritical, and apathetic, but actually might be morons? I don’t know.
Biden and Harris both have been fairly active in supporting labor and trying to tackle corporate Greed. Harris regularly talked about anti-gouging laws as well as the other items mentioned already. Biden was the most pro-union president we’ve seen in decades, had a strong NLRB, and was responsible for appointing the most active and effective FTC head we’ve seen in ages.
There are many many issues with the democratic party, but holy shit, being less supportive of the working class than fucking Republicans is absolutely not one of them.
That the overwhelming majority of voters are not just uninformed, uncritical, and apathetic, but actually might be morons? I don’t know.
Biden and Harris both have been fairly active in supporting labor and trying to tackle corporate Greed. Harris regularly talked about anti-gouging laws as well as the other items mentioned already. Biden was the most pro-union president we’ve seen in decades, had a strong NLRB, and was responsible for appointing the most active and effective FTC head we’ve seen in ages.
There are many many issues with the democratic party, but holy shit, being less supportive of the working class than fucking Republicans is absolutely not one of them.
Voters aren’t stupid. The reason so many people like Bernie is because he’s genuine and walks the walk. Supporting a candidate that doesn’t actually match his values would significantly weaken that.
Harris said she could not think of anything she would do different from Biden in a period where Biden was remarkably unpopular and people are hurting, a lot. And she essentially promised them more of the same. “We won’t go back” is not a promise to move forward. And her promises to help people start a business and give child credits… does not help anyone not interested in starting a business, who already has kids or does not want kids. Everything was contingent on very narrow promises.
So the voters that needed change stayed home… They can say they did not vote for Trump and wash their hands of anything bad that happens.
Let’s see how it pans out.
Could the Democrats do more? Sure. But they’re still recovering from the fever that took the party over with Clinton in '92.
If that’s true, Jesus H. Christ, Democratic party, just get out of the way and let someone else fight fascism. If you’re “still recovering” 32 goddamn years later, you’re not recovering. That’s just a permanent part of the party identity. And the people are clearly not wild about what you’ve become if you lose to Donald Fucking Trump two out of three times.
So just quit.
Shut the party down and let something else take its place, because whatever happened in 92 is chronic and terminal, and you’re bringing the rest of the country down with you.
I think the American middle got taken by surprise at their own apathy in '16. Then in '20 they were motivated by fear. This week, they showed that they’ve simply lost faith in the Democratic party, plain and simple. That they’re tired of what they’ve been getting from the party and they’ll accept a horrible person over perpetuating the arrogance and inaction of the Democrats.
And while I can’t say I was too fed up to support Harris, now that Tuesday is behind us, as much as I despise Trump, I have to admit that the Democrats got exactly what they deserved at the ballot box: the same lukewarm apathy they’ve shown the American people the past 12 years.
Maybe they’ll finally get the message and put together a cohesive, intelligent, inspiring platform and message for the midterms, but if history is anything to go by, I’m guessing that this time in 2 years, they’re thrilled as fuck to take back the House (with too slim a majority to do much beyond hold up legislation), with progressives gaining slightly more seats than now, and the party as a whole will still have the same lack of focus, direction, and message…
…and I would bet money that this time in 2026 they still don’t have anything close to an idea of a possible presidential nominee that gets people excited.
Working class people can also suck, tho. Remember all those stickers they put on the gas pumps blaming biden for the price of gas. Like, common you fucking fools, that’s ridiculous and you would never let you bitch boy trump take the credit for that.
If you don’t want to be crying again in 2028, start working now.
Some of us never quit. It’s just annoying that everytime you bring up legit concerns its met with people defending the status quo. 2016 the status quo was drug to the town square and hung. I don’t care if you pulled it down marionette it around, it’s 2024 and a knife was stabbed through the heart of this country. Democrats still have the helm and they will do nothing, they will let it bleed out. All the power of the american government and they cannot weird it despite a lifetime working in it.
If democrats were even going to consider change they would spend their political capital, NOW. Since it is all gone come January.
The problem with status quo defense is that the status quo gets progressively (couldn’t help myself) worse the more time goes on.
The status quo has changed before. Civil rights did happen. The problem now is progress has reached the upper echelons of power and the scared white boys don’t want to give it up. It won’t be long before most realize power won’t being given without force.
Yeah, just like the republicans. Its the part of all this leftist shaming on here never addressed. I voted democrat because they were the lesser of two evils. At no time did I think they were going fix whats broken.
“Will 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 economic power?” Sanders asked.
”Probably not”
Bernie has been the Cassandra of the Democratic Party for decades. They need to realize that it has gone too far. The insane wealth gap, which has surpassed pre-Revolution France at this point, combined with the unaffordability of everything has created a crisis that won’t be fixed by platitudes and vague promises.
People are desperate, afraid, and angry. Changing that to hope and enthusiasm requires real plans that average voters can understand and even more than that requires correctly showing people the source of the problem.
Being beholden to billionaires is the real problem. And all their money, advertising, polling, and other bullshit didn’t do a damn thing to help Harris. Take them on the way FDR did or give the country to republicans permanently.
The insane wealth gap, which has surpassed pre-Revolution France
Let that sink in
The only focused Democratic message for the past 8+ years has been, “We need to stop Trump,” which I agree with, but without Trump, I can’t think of a single, unified message. That’s not enough to get the general population fired up and excited to vote for her. One thing that made Obama so popular is he had specific goals and gave people hope.
Trump, in the meantime, has been feeding people all sorts of promises and hopes and dreams. They’re all terrible and full of shit, but that is a more powerful message than just, “We need to stop Harris.”
You know what does excite the dems though? And also the republicans?
Actual progressive policies……
As close as this election was, if Bernie betrayed the Democratic Party and ran as an independent in 2016, do you think he would have won
I do
Funny how none of that ever gets even close to reality though ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It used to be maddening, now it’s just disappointing
He’s truly a rare breed. The first (and only) politician to get a sign in my yard once upon a time
I’m also legitimately convinced that the average American person is just an asshole and likes other assholes. Trump is the most conceited, whiney, cry baby, know it all, jagoff and everybody knows it. He wears it like a medal. And people love it man. They just eat it up.
It’s just like Carlin said. The politicians come from us. Because they are us.
I don’t know, I try to be a little more optimistic. over 250million eligible voters, only 70million voted for Trump. That’s less than a 1/3 and could be lower if you included the entire population. People will spend extra time to pursue things that will benefit them directly, there just needs to be better communication about the good things that will benefit them for their time, not the things to be fearful of because people will tune that out (as shown by the voter turnout).
Truth!
Trump is the most conceited, whiney, cry baby, know it all, jagoff and everybody knows it. He wears it like a medal. And people love it man. They just eat it up.
That’s the thing. I’m sick of the media painting this as a “they’re holding their noses and voting” thing. This dude doesn’t win despite his vulger rallies and his racist, sexist, homophobic, crazy, whiney, criminal, and arrogant behavior… He wins because of that shit.
God fucking dammit he should have been the fucking president in 2016. Fuck this timeline.
Gore should have been the president in 2000
Spoiler alert: They will remain beholden to big money interests and continue to lose. God damn it.
I wonder why Bernie and other progressives don’t band together and announce their own party. With enough big names (especially Bernie) they could gather enough attention to be a viable third party that actually represents progressive and more left leaning ideas than the democrats. They have two years until the next local elections to get their foot on the race, I think they could get done traction if they actually go for that
Bernie is not nearly as popular as most on the internet echo chambers would have you believe.
The fact is this is now a money game. Grass roots campaings and parties are more disadvantaged than ever at being able to get their voice out to people, especially ones that arent perptually over connected to the internet and forums.
In terms of grassroots support, he’s been very effective. This map is from 2020 when there was an actual primary but it does paint the picture pretty well:
Source of graph (it’s paywalled but I found the image directly in the search results and copied it lol)
Because they understand the spoiler effect.
The Democrats have been spoiling elections plenty on their own
We already lost. The time is now to work on something new. Tuesday and the 60 days before it were shut up and vote. Today and the next 3.5 years are shout and organize.
there is the democratic socialists of america that have a handful of elected officials, oddly not including bernie. it seems like they’re more of a sub party or organization within the dems though, not their own party
There is a lot of “invisible” work that party orgs do. If you want to see why big names and attention alone don’t work, look at the Green Party. They have name recognition, ballot access and even get a bit of the vote each presidential election. What they’re missing is the “ground game” that gives the presence in nearly every race in every precinct, and the local engagement to actually win an appreciable chunk of elections every year (not just the presidential years).
Bernie purposefully did not do that because he did not want to be seen as another Ralph Nader. He believed working inside the system would do more good than doing a dirty break. I also wish he went in the direction of a break from the democratic party, but that’s just not who he is.
Sigh I was the same way but now I see that people just won’t get out out to keep evil men at bay. I had hoped we can stick with the dems until the GOP is not a threat and then make our break.
If we made a progressive party now I wonder how many dire hard dems will join?
Unfortunately I would think very few would care. For example, the Green party is very progressive, and comes with a TON of advantages electorally. They’re on the ballot in almost every state, run in local and national elections, and have a system all set up for nominating people, etc. When you look at the Green party’s platform, it’s very close to what the progressives claim to actually want. Yet most democrats just shit on them at every opportunity instead of voting for the platform they ostensibly believe in.
To be fair, most people only know Jill Stein. And a suspected Russian agent who thinks Wi-Fi causes cancer is not the best foot to put forward
I’ve voted for the Green Party in past elections and will agree with this.
While I personally do like Stein, I agree that others would be better. Stein didn’t even want to run, but the Green Party loses all the electoral benefits I mentioned if they DON’T run. Stein basically recruited Cornell West to run for the Green Party nomination, and there was a time when it looked like he would be the nominee. However, he dropped out because he didn’t want to do the campaigning work within the party to become the nominee. If he had actually been serious about running, he could have clinched it and I think would have gotten a ton more traction. From what I’ve heard, it seemed like he was scared to gain too much traction and potentially be a real spoiler. When he left the Green Party, someone had to run to preserve their electoral benefits, so Stein stepped in.
So the working class had to be specifically told
- the democrats support unions
- the democrats support breaking up monopolies
- the cost of living is a complex issue with multiple causes that will take a very careful and calculated collection of regulations regarding home ownership, rent, taxes, and it’s not going to work for everyone, and it’s not going to happen overnight
- supporting and expanding social welfare programs helps everyone
What are they expecting? The Republicans will be able to write a law saying Netflix will be cheaper and have no ads?
The DNC needs to allow voters to elect who they actually want during the primary. We were force fed Hillary because the DNC didn’t want Bernie. We didn’t even have a primary because we were force fed Biden, then given Harris because Biden was so unelectable. The DNC must allow democratic process to take place so that voters elect the presidential candidate that they want.
The DNC is too old and too set in it’s ways. They’re like a bad police force- unreformable.
The only way forward for the DNC is to visibly jettison their old guard and hope enough voters give them another shot- which is also a maybe at best. Losers lose.
Democratic party aside, Bernie couldn’t get the votes. I actually think the news media has been a much much bigger problem with someone like Bernie getting power. They always try to paint someone like him as being radical, when anywhere else in the world he would be a normal person on the left.
I have a feeling that that might change after this election. There’s a real sense among liberal media (that I engage with) that a loss of this magnitude needs to be answered by a pretty substantial break with the status quo.
I’ll believe it when I see it, there is too much money to be made by selling division and overblown narratives.
they’re too busy sanewashing totally normal ideas like seperating children from parents, tariffs on every import, and mass deportation. Totally rational positions squarely in the overton window.
What will they say about the concentration camps those immigrants are rounded up into? What will they say about the military being deployed to round up residents? I guess we’ll find out.
Taxing billionaires though, how radical
The issue with Bernie is that everyone knows he’s a socialist. If there was someone else who presented the same ideas Bernie has while also saying “I’m totally not like Bernie” people would actually vote for that candidate. Most Americans are closeted socialists, they’ll in favor of socialist policies as long as you don’t call it socialism.
Did Hilary not get more votes from the public than Bernie?
we don’t do that anymore, having “democratic” in party name is enough. be prepared to have liz cheney as nominee with ben shapiro as her running mate in 2028.
Nah i dont think yall are willing to do it. 2028 you’ll be holding your nose again voting for an out of touch moderate to oppose trumps third term instead of giving a progressive you completely agree with any kind of chance.
I’ll be able to vote in a primary next time
Oh, haha-ah, you sweet summer child. Sure you will, after all but two candidates drop out of the race and give their hard-won delegates to the conservative candidate in exchange for cabinet positions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_2020_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries
–I kid, with the condescension, because this is what happened before many of us got a chance to vote in the primaries in 2020 -A primary that Kamala Harris dropped out of because she was deeply unpopular.
Hrc was deeply unpopular. Biden was. Obama ran on personality and empty promises. He showed her was all too willing to sell himself when he first distanced himself from Rev. Weight, then moved his church membership. Phyrric victory, for him and everyone else.
Theres no primaries anymore. The wealthy party leaders decide the nominees.
There’s never been real primaries.
You dont think Obama in 2008 was a real primary? His campaign fought hard for that nomination, it definitely wasn’t handed to them.
Yep, that was the last real one. Since then the establishment didn’t want to lose control of the process, so they setup the primaries.
It’s all too much. The Democratic party wants to be a big tent party, the party of all. That’s just not possible. Every group wants the party to prioritize their issues. Blacks and whites, straight people and gay people, men and women, young and old, religious people and atheists, owners and workers, cops and criminals, leftists, moderates, and conservatives, etc, etc, etc. We can’t give everyone what they want.
I’m sorry, I really am, but we can’t make everyone happy. Especially since a lot of these groups do not like each other. Look, it would be great if all these different groups could come together in one big rainbow coalition of peace, join hands and sing Kumbaya but it ain’t gonna fucking happen. Stop trying to please and appease all these people and instead try to materially improve the lives of as many people as possible.
Stop trying to achieve perfect justice for every identity group and just focus on making housing more fucking affordable for as many people as possible, and healthcare, and a decent education, and so forth.
A party for the working class would be the biggest tent of all. But focusing on divisiveness is more profitable.
Theres very little truth to this. Like most people that have broken the law arent identifying as criminals. Theyre not lobbying for more crime. Atheists arent trying to ban religion, etc. There are a lot of things that are just universally beneficial, like healthcare, environment, education. Its not a matter of opposing groups, its one group that wants to hurt people.
There are a lot of things that are just universally beneficial, like healthcare, environment, education.
Ok, so let’s focus on that stuff, then. My point is, maybe we can’t achieve perfect justice and fairness for everyone, so let’s just try to like make rent more affordable and make it so people don’t have to stress as much about paying their bills and maintaining a decent standard of living.
Oh that was up for vote, everyone here voted against it because it cant win.
focus on making housing more fucking affordable for as many people as possible, and healthcare, and a decent education, and so forth.
Didn’t Biden work on these issues, successfully or unsuccessfully, in the last 4 years?
