Welcome to Progressive Politics! A place for news updates and political discussion from a left perspective. Conservatives and centrists are welcome just try and keep it civil :)
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It's the money. Campaigns are increasingly expensive by design. That and Citizens United basically made it so moneyed interests never have to worry about grassroots ever again. That's (very tangentially) why the internet is also getting so unpleasant, I think, to poison the discourse. If people were nice to each other all the time, we'd band together more easily. Paid trolls exist for a reason.
On reddit, for my criticism of the Democratic Party, I am often censored on liberal spaces besides r/50501.
I follow the rules always, I cite sources, I am polite, and I am a US citizen. I am not influenced by Russian propaganda (to the best of my knowledge), and I'd like to say I have decent stances; I advocate for nonviolence and human rights, and generally advocate for progress and civility.
The "trolls" (I do my best to always assume good faith) here have nowhere near as much power here on the fediverse as on reddit.
On reddit, once you block someone, it shuts down discussion completely. Users there strategically block after their first rebuttal to prevent any of your responses from showing up and to gain the last word. I often waste time researching and typing a response, only to find out I was blocked and my response is only showing up for me. The only way to get around this is to edit your comments from before they blocked you, and it is very awkward (and usually results in lots of downvotes when you can't properly respond to someone calling you a Russian troll).
If OP blocks you, you get kicked from the thread completely. You can neither see the thread after that point, nor respond to anyone else. Even your comments on the thread are invisible on your user profile (so unless you do voodoo and find the comment permalink, it's difficult to edit your comment with a response).
Mods also abuse automod to trick you into thinking your posts or comments are showing up for others (like setting it to remove everything for a specific user). They do this to avoid accountability when they can't easily explain what rule you broke or when mods censor based on ideological grounds. I also get censored automatically by automod often and find that my posts or comments don't show up randomly - presumably I hit automod filters, but I still worry every single time that my account is shadowbanned.
If automod and the blocking functionality isn't abused, any divergent opinion or perspective gets completely buried by downvotes. Like me pointing out how rigged things are for progressives (it's hard for me to stomach people acting like the Democrats need to move right because progressive policies are "extremely unpopular").
Anyway, moderation has been very fair here to me, I just want others to know that reddit is completely busted for healthy discourse and some of the tricks users and mods use to create echo chambers.
It's a lot of energy to invest in a discourse that is being oppositionally refereed. Under better circumstances I'd say it was laudable, and on Lemmy the effort is certainly less wasted, but I'm starting to wonder if maybe the better part of our energies are better spent on in-person political efforts.
People who unironically belive that you can create real change by "voting harder" are the same people who think you can climb the economic ladder by "pulling yourself by the bootstrings"
The guy is still running and the people can still vote for him. I'm not even sure that this endorsement is that necessary for this position:
The party hadn’t endorsed a mayoral candidate in 16 years prior to backing Fateh.
Whatever the feelings about the DFL and how they handled it, the power of the vote would seem to be intact. It's a bit premature to be fatalistic about voting in this particular scenario.
The Democrats who are refusing to respect "blue no matter who" as they support Cuomo anyway is worthy of criticism, but even then Mamdani is still the official candidate and the people can vote. The Cuomo supporters are acting poorly, but again, the vote at least still matters.
Raise awareness as well about these moves, but don't be dismissive of the voting.
The Democratic Party is a honey pot trap used to attract and neutralize progressive and leftist politicians and policies and ensure that the “Overton Window” of American politics never moves left. They will let you “talk” about universal healthcare, for example, but they will never, EVER allow it to move forward as a serious legislative agenda.
Never forget that Obama had two whole years of a significant Democratic majority in both Congress AND Senate, and still somehow couldn't muster the cojones to pass anything even close to the socialised healthcare he'd campaigned on and had a huge popular mandate for.
Someone please explain why it is that when Republicans are the minority they have the ability to block absolutely everything the ruling party attempts, and yet when the Democrats are in opposition suddenly somehow it's impossible for them to do anything?
"Start small at the local level" centrists said, suppressing laughter.
We need a true leftist workers party so bad in America. Democrats are center right.
Everyone knows the democrats will do this every time. “Vote blue no matter who” is a crock of shit and every single person who gives you shit for not voting for Harris and her shitty campaign that pandered to the right and Israel can be directed to party leadership’s behavior here and in New York
If they can run the risk of handing over mayorships to republicans because the “blue” candidate isn’t correctly blue then logically I can say I’m not going to back any genocide enabling, insider trading, corporate slaves who will sell out any marginalized group to keep their entrenched power (see newsoms pandering anti trans bullshit to charlie kirk).
"Vote blue no matter who" is a direct result of FPTP voting. Until that's fixed, yeah keep voting blue...if there isn't a more progressive candidate.
We need a viable third party and the time to start one was November 6, 2024. We're past the point to make a dent in the midterms (assuming we have elections) but we have time to run progressive candidates.
The time to do something different always seems to be some other time than now.
Yep! Especially if the dogma is "3--4 years ahead of the next election" while having one every 2 years.
Building a party doesn't mean aiming for victory right next election. It takes time. It will take a lot of time starting from now, or from next year.
The best time to start it was before xxx. The next best time is now.
We cannot vote our way out of this
Idk how many times the democrats need to prove this, but the DNC exists to protect capital interests against socialist policies and candidates.
This isn't a problem with FPTP systems, its a problem of class conflict, and our whole fucking system was built with it in mind. Democrats will sooner partner with fascists to arrest progressive opposition than allow them to pull the country to the left of them.
The issue is that with ballot access laws, third parties have to have a ton of momentum. And Democrats systematically engage in lawfare to kick third parties and other individuals off the ballot - look it up, they fight anyone to the left of them with more cohesion than they fight Republicans or Trump.
Would be awesome to get a link to a news source as opposed to a Twitter screenshot.
I keep hearing how the new DNC Chair (whose name I only hear when people are telling me this) is doing things differently now and this is going to stop.
OK new DNC Chair whose name is in the news so rarely I can never remember it, it hardly seems like there could be a more fertile opportunity to stop working against progressives, so any day now.
But you better vote for centrist genocider corporatists (who hate you) in the next election, or the centrist commenters on lemmy will NEVER FORGIVE YOU.
*eyeroll
Yeah, and currently people seem to think that Gavin Newsome would be anything other than a stock standard Democrat if he manages to win a 2028 Presidential bid (if the US even has an election).
But it's all just Social Media "clap back" and talking points. Obviously it's better to have a contender willing to do that, but he's unlikely to be much more than Biden 2.0.
🙄 🫸social populism
😍👍 trolling on twitter