this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2026
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I'm getting really sick of this attitude. You are speaking about the past Dem leadership, and I'm speaking about the future Dem leadership. They don't have to continue on the same feckless path they've been on, especially if we FORCE them to act decisively.
If the Midterms happen, it's going to be a bloodbath, and a LOT of new Democratic Warriors are going to enter Congress, carrying the righteous indignation of the voters.
Jeffries and Schmuckie aren't likely to survive the leadership vote, and the next leaders will have to be willing to stand up to MAGA. This is what the people, and the incoming Congressional Warriors, are going to demand.
This is how the 90s Republicans spawned the Tea Party, which took over the party, then morphed into MAGA, and took over. The Dems are at the stage of creating their own Tea Party (Progressives) that can take control of the Democratic Party, and reconfigure it to reflect the true values of the Democratic VOTERS.
If Democrats manage to gain power again, they'd better hold people accountable, or we will hold them accountable. And weak citizens like you, trying to convince people that it's already over, the Dems will never fight for us, we might as well roll over for whatever fate MAGA has in store for us, are as much a problem as MAGA. If you aren't going to encourage people that there is still an enormous battle ahead of us to prepare for, and are going to just discourage people that it's already lost, them YOU are as much a part of the problem as MAGA.
Wishcasting better leadership isn't going to do shit. What are you going to do to force them? Millions of people protested all across this country against police brutality and the Democrat response was to increase police funding and increase federal law enforcement budgets. THEY DON'T CARE ABOUT YOU OR WHAT YOU WANT.
You are that cowardly that you've already given up, and have now taken to try to talk others into giving up with you? Either you are MAGA, or just a coward. How pathetic and gross, just ew.
We have to make them care. They care about their jobs, so threaten to take them away, and mean it. They care about their legacy, so relentlessly call them out in social media. Go to their town halls and aggressively demand action. Dog their every action, call their offices on every vote, etc. If you have the ability, primary your feckless Democratic rep, even if you know you'll lose. You'll still get to publicly call them out on their abdication of their responsibilities. And you never know, sometimes primaries have surprises, like AOC kicking out the #4 guy in Congress, or Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle losing his primary while he was the highest ranking member of Congress in 2004. Crazy shit happens in elections all the time.
And it's not just about our DC reps. MAGA has deliberately infiltrated every level of government, demanding stupid legislation on chemtrails and vaccines and other stupid flat-earth bullshit, and we need to mercilessly attack every MAGA in government.
We can force them, we just have to flex our Citizen muscles, and not just tell everyone to surrender because it's already over. How fucking weak and cowardly is that?
I wish you'd actually address my other question about what actions or statements by the Dems make you think all this imaginary stuff about what you wish they're going to do. You're completely delusional. I hope you're young, at least that would explain why you haven't figured out the nature of the major political parties in America. If you're over thirty, woof.
I'm going to give you two good ones, and then you can start paying attention, and find your own examples.
Rep. Ocasio-Cortez questions Michael Cohen
This was the Congressional testimony of Michael Cohen, who was about to go to prison, and wanted to tell all about Trump. Unfortunately, as usual, the Congressional panelists were far more interested in posturing and pontificating, and NONE were doing anything substantive. I was watching it at the time, and it was frustrating as a viewer, and it was obvious that Cohen was frustrated, too. He wanted to tell his story, but nobody was asking the right questions.
Then the newly minted Congresswoman from NYC, made her first appearance on the national stage. With remarkable confidence, AOC informed Cohen that she'd be moving quickly, and he agreed, and she dove in, firing question after question at him, which he answered in equally rapidfire responses.
By the time she was finished, the whole world knew a small slice of the financial crimes he had committed, and who knew about it. The answers to the questions that only she bothered to ask, formed the basis of the case that Leticia James later brought against Trump, and convicting him of 34 felonies. The entire thing leads back to AOC's FIRST appearance in front of Congress.
I suspected at the time, and still believe it, that she was set up to offer this line of inquiry, so the old guard could do what they do best, blather on about bullshit, while giving her the opportunity to start collecting scalps in her new position. It probably didn't hurt that she was a NYC congressional rep, talking to an NYC corrupt lawyer.
Now she is considered one of the absolute leaders of the New Guard, and the base loves and trusts her implicitly. Over and over, she has shown her enthusiastic willingness to go face-to-face with the MAGA Morons, and metaphorically spit in their faces, and she has inspired COUNTLESS America citizens to get involved in progressive politics, and even run for office themselves. Following her has been Frost, Slotkin, and many others. So tell me again how the new people are the same as the old ones.
And speaking of the old ones, here's another example that the Dem party seems to be on a different path:
A few months into MAGA 2.0, I saw an interview with Adam Schiff, who I generally respect, something I RARELY say about ANY politician. He's an old school Democratic weakling, but Trump seems to have inspired him to show some willingness to fight back (along with Raskin), so I want to encourage that inclination. Anyway, he was asked about the MAGA blitzkrieg of EOs and illegal actions and DOGE piracy, and he was very contrite in saying that they underestimated America 's willingness to handle "bold action," and MAGA clearly demonstrated that it was possible. It was clear that he had a change of heart about strategy.
More importantly, Schiff isn't going on one of those Sunday morning shows to spew his own personal opinion. He is there to speak for the party, and give the party's line, and clearly they understood that they had been too cautious, and were now paying the price.
The problem doesn't seem to be Congress as a whole. There are lots of people chomping at the bit to fight back, but they're all hostages to the insipid, feckless, useless, cowardly leadership of Jeffries and Schmuck Schumer. Those two are closet MAGAs, or might as well be. It is highly unlikely they'll survive the leadership vote after the freshman reps arrive after the Midterm Bloodbath.
And here's a bonus one: Mark Kelly, and all the other ex-military members who released those videos reminding the military to only obey lawful orders. That was an extraordinary moment, a strategy calculated to force the administration to endorse the breaking of military law. Now they are stupidly attacking Kelly personally, suddenly making him a front-runner for the Democratic Nomination in 2028.
How about another bonus:
There are lots of examples of Schmuck 's trademarked "Stern Letter" responses to MAGA criminality, but there are also lots of examples of legal opposition, such as the defiance of Leticia James and Jack Smith, and others. Boutique law firms have popped up all over DC, formed by lawyers and law firms that were fired by the administration for prosecuting MAGA crimes, and those new firms are focussing on and addressing the corruption and immigration crimes of the administration. While the Biden administration couldn't be bothered, these cases are getting to court, and they are successful most of the time.
There is a new progressive wing who are active and influential outside of the size of their representation on Congress, and their representation is likely to increase greatly in November, as will their power over the party. Current members are acknowledging that they needed to be more decisive the last time, and understand that the voters will reward, or punish, them depending on their behavior. And there are legal outfits dedicated to challenging everything this administration is doing, and winning.
That's a lot of difference between the lazy Biden administration, with his useless Republican Attorney General, and the angry, restless Congress that is growing steadily, fueled by the righteous indignation of their constituents. The only thing holding them back at this point are Jeffries, and especially Schumer. Those two losers have got to get out of the way, or they'll get stomped on, which they richly deserve.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
TOWN HALLS! PHONE CALLS! Lmao
Your belief that those who doubt your tactics are giving up makes you a fascist in my view. If you think the only way forward is to believe in America, then I'm going to pave the future straight over you, and Trump too.
You are as delusional as MAGA. All you have is vague whiney complaints based on your lack of Critical Thinking Skills, and absolutely no solutions at all. Just scream about how everything is unfair, everybody is mean to you, and everybody is a big poopyhead.
Grow up and get in the real fight, and quit trying to pretend you're doing something, by doing nothing.
Wow this one is mega scratched
MAGA troll.
"And weak citizens like you, trying to convince people that it's already over, the Dems will never fight for us, we might as well roll over for whatever fate MAGA has in store for us, are as much a problem as MAGA. "
This is incorrect. PorkrollPosadist's pessimistic opinions do not make him as much as a problem as MAGA.
You are being emotional, and some of your assertions only have a basis in emotion and not rationality.
I encourage you to retract the insult.
Damn right I'm pissed off, and emotional about the loss of my nation to treasonous pedophile scum. I'm not apologizing for pointing out that discouraging action, without offering solutions, is encouraging that enemy. Anyone who isn't angry about MAGAs vicious destruction of our country IS a disgusting weakling.
And your whiny call for politeness toward MAGA appeasers and collaborators makes YOU just as much of a MAGA appeaser. You're probably one of those people who follows the insipid Michelle Obama Doctrine: "When they go low, we go high," possibly the dumbest political statement I've ever heard, outside of EVERYTHING uttered by any MAGA. When they go low, you metaphorically kick them in the teeth, then stomp their heads.
Corrupt Traitors, racists, rapists, misogynists, ignoramuses, and PEDOPHILES deserve nothing less. They certainly do it to us every chance they get. They even manufacture opportunities to deliberately hurt us. Don't they deserve the same treatment in return?
But you want to be polite, just like Chamberlain and the Nazis. That pathological need for Democrats to always be polite, even in the to face of withering corruption, is the reason that the MAGA Traitors are BACK in power. We locked them out once, and weaklings like you let them right back in, because it was so important to be polite to bullies. How is THAT strategy working out for you?
Retract my posts? No, I stand by every word.
Lol I'm not polite, I just don't like you.
Pressuring the democrats to take action is somewhere between neutral impact to positive impact.
Pure electoralism will not help you. You need to understand that the guy you're chewing out has a point.
The point of the 2 party system is to preserve capital and the interests of capital. The democrats have spent decades pretending to be unable to fight back.
Remember that it was Chuck Schumer and the democrats who decided to amplify Donald Trump in the Republican primary of the 2016 election.
Real action involves organizing with other people to create a force that can stand on it's own legs and push back against the system.
Also fuck your country.
The US Democratic Party is a patronage network for political donations and jobs in the field. This operation is successful on its own terms.
Awareness of political realities will move the conversation away from the totally fake, very well reinforced narrative that they are an opposition political party in the business of opposing anything, much less anything risky.
We can expect that some of the bourgeois class are looking at the Republicans' destructiveness as not working in their best interest.
We should expect some of the forces capital to support more Democrats to take more decisive action.
{YAWN}
Yeah, yeah, we know all that. You're still stuck in the past, and have voluntarily surrendered to MAGA. Or perhaps, you're just a MAGA troll or bot, trying to discourage Democratic activism. I saw lots of that on Reddit, and I'm seeing it increase on Lemmy - "Both sides are against us, it's already over, there's nothing we can do but lie down and take it."
We have a two party system, like it or not. Both parties have been compromised, but that doesn't mean they have to stay that way. I've watched the Republicans spend 40 years morphing into MAGA, because their activists didn't just surrender to the status quo, they worked hard to take control of their party, and then turn it into the psychopathic race police they always wanted to be, and apparently pedophiles, too, as well as the opportunity to loot our government for personal gain.
They decided to go that direction, but there is no reason that Dems can't do the same thing with their party, and force them to reconfigure their operation to reflect the values and demands of their voters. Republicans accommodated the Racists and Pedophiles in their party, the Democratic Party can reconfigure to accommodate the Humanists in theirs.
Your right, we'll never get anywhere with the OLD Democratic Party, so let's make a new one that reflects the values of the good, decent, moral people of this country.
Respectfully, you don't know me. I am no MAGA and it's not over.
In the 50+ years since the Southern Strategy, do you see evidence that the Democratic Party is capable of systemic change, much less of leading the country toward it?
The two-party system has driven untold misery at home and abroad. What most Americans see as our past stability, many other humans see as looting the globe and driving its people into poverty and servitude.
The idea that change can only ever come through voting and elected representatives, around here, that's called electoralism. No shade, many people of goodwill thought that was the best they could do. The most casual reading of history shows clear alternative paths.
FYI the Indivisible campaign in the US has attempted your proposal, Tea Party strategy from the liberal "left"
You won't catch me defending the Democratic party, I've been an Unafilliated Independent since I first registered to vote in 1977. I hate both parties, and don't want to be a member of either club. Instead, I belong to the largest group of voters - Independents.
But I also recognize that it is a two party system, and right now, the party that would be the most likely to influence toward our side is the Democratic Party. That's just reality.
Throughout the 80s and 90s, I watched the Republicans totally reconfigure their party into a powerhouse, mostly through the careful growth and deployment of the Conservative Propaganda Machine, until they created the monster called the Tea Party, which eventually embraced MAGA. They played a long term game, and won.
The Dems need to do get in the game, and reconfigure their party for the future battle, and they don't have the luxury of decades to do it. They have to strike hard and fast, and WE have to force them to do it.
If they don't, if we allow them to lay back and take it once more, we are likely to lead to Civil War, Balkanization, perhaps worse.
I'm still trying to fight back while we still have legitimate legal options like elections to justify any later actions that need to be taken. I'm also still hoping that these Dumb Apes will be undone by their own virtuosic incompetence. Give them enough rope, and they'll hang themselves, and they're already trying to tie a noose, so there is progress on that front.
The only problem is how much damage they'll do along the way, so it's imperative to do anything we can to speed their downfall.
I've seen this one before. In 2016-2018, the entire party, media, and generally any member of the public who could be described as vaguely progressive was in complete hysteria about the end of democracy. A massive national soul-searching was undertaken (within the boundaries of Liberalism). A massive pondering of "how did we get here?" Setting the absolute fixation on Russia aside, ideas of an epistemological crisis driven by disinformation campaigns on social media weren't unfounded. It also raised deep questions about the health and wellbeing of democracy in the US. There were so many problems to tackle, from felony disenfranchisement, to voter roll purges, to gerrymandering, media consolidation, the asphyxiating torrent of corporate campaign finance. All of these things contribute to creating the perfect storm which is our shambolic electoral system. For a moment, it seemed like people (like, powerful people) were beginning to realize we had let this shit slip too far, and that deep reforms were necessary to save the republic.
I was THERE. I was a true believer. A patriotic liberal who had come to realize what a smart thing Obama did. Taking a trust-fall into the arms of the institutions, rather than expediently circumventing them to side-step the oncoming disaster. I trusted the system. I felt a personal responsibility to contribute. I went to demonstrations, contributed to electoral campaigns, and spent nearly every waking hour trying to spread the gospel on social media. I had people on r/Politics asking me to run for Congress.
The Trump regime enjoyed total impunity for two terribly long years. At last the Democrats had retaken the house. Now was the time for investigations, transparency, accountability, reform, impeachment. They poured water on that REALLY quick. Delayed for demured for nearly a year before finally impeaching Trump over some extremely contrived bullshit, rather than the fucking across-the-board fraud and corruption.
With the incoming administration in 2020, it was time to fix all of these holes. To do something, ANYTHING about the onslaught of corporate money in elections, the ubiquitous corruption, gerrymandering (2020 was a Census year, after all), ALL the fucking bullshit they use to turn our elections into a fucking joke. It was also a time of acute revolutionary crisis, with the George Floyd Uprising fighting back in steadfast resistance to the impunity of the police state.
The time was ripe for long overdue reforms. What we got instead was a shriveled warm body who was run for the explicit purpose of preventing that from happening. The Biden administration spent another four long years doing everything in its power to sharpen every implement of state violence, reforming absolutely nothing of substance, only to hand the keys right back over to Trump.
This year a number of new Democrats will be elected as freshmen representatives. Some of them might even be GOOD, but the incumbents aren't going anywhere. They are the ones who control the party, control the committee assignments. They are the ones who will choose the leadership, and their decision will be driven by the same calculus that it always has been.
What gives you this impression? Congressional leadership is not a popular election. It is one of the first orders of business after swearing in a new Congress, when public pressure on the caucus is at its lowest. Schumer might leave just because he's ancient and bad for the brand, but we're not getting a radical. We're getting somebody who can maintain the status quo, but do the messaging better.
Again, do you live under a rock? What do you think the Sanders campaigns in 2016 and 2020 were? They were EXACTLY this. They fucking crushed it. It turns out the bourgeoisie finds social democracy to be utterly repulsive, while they couldn't care less about the personal power-play of a couple oil tycoons who want to "run America like a business."
We've already run though the cycle of expecting the Democrats to hold people accountable, and then trying to hold the Democrats themselves accountable. There is NO accountability.
Ok. How many hours have you spent standing in Lafayette Square shouting at the White House in the pouring rain? How many times have you packed a tent and a sleeping bag and skipped going to party with your friends because something must be done, even though you know that something will change absolutely nothing. How many nights have you spent sleeping on the cold city concrete to maintain an encampment? I vote. I go to demonstrations. I used to write my representatives too, but I know my representatives well enough to know I am better off writing to my allies. I've been doing "my civic duty" for nearly two decades now. Long enough to know this is not going to cut it.
It IS over buddy, but don't worry. It is not the end of the world. This sclerotic republic must die, so something new and beautiful can be born from the ashes.
PRP's story demonstrates the (rueful) value of electoral work. People get in, do the work, see how the deck is stacked and how it plays out, move left.
You’re getting sick of the truth is that you’re sick of.