Dimmer06

Only polling above Vance by 2% in the popular vote should be extremely embarrassing.

I think I cashed out the $100 of Bitcoin I had to help pay for a PS3. Today it would be worth like $15k

Maybe we should just turn the DSA into the US version of the International or whatever that USSR organization of different socialist parties was lol.

Functionally this is how DSA actually works. Most members are uncaucused but the caucuses run things and are quite rigid with their discipline, functioning like small parties in their own right in much the same way there were multiple factions of the RSDLP.

Iirc Megan is Red Star the ML caucus and Ashik is (was?) from the Groundwork caucus, the extreme opportunist pseudo-Marxists who really only care about attaching DSA's name to electoral victories. Let that color any interpretation of this interview.

I did not watch the interview but the answer is absolutely not. NYC DSA specifically and the organization more broadly do this all the time where they endorse candidates with little to no relationship to the organization to attach their name to an up and coming social democrat. Then, because the DSA lacks any actual proletarian power, the candidate is pressured or caves into bourgeois interests and burns DSA.

I have noticed an interesting dynamic with Platner's campaign, that his core base are middle aged people who have been political hacks most of their lives and young people who are going to forget who he is before the election. Younger people who are actually plugged in don't seem to like him all that much. I think that's why DSA hasn't come out for him as of yet.

Idk why anyone pretends that every Democrat over sixty (which is probably a majority of Dems in this ancient state) isn't going to vote for Collins anyways. They've supported her for the last 25 years and they will continue to do so until she has ascended as the lich queen.

Maine primaries are next spring I think. Maybe next June? The general election is in 11 months

HR was 40 minutes late to the anti-union meeting they were hosting lmao.

I'm pretty sure the whole point of Marxism is that vibes aren't real, they're just the shadows of material relationships. Hegel said three spirits drove history. Marx retorted that it was the forces and relations of production that drove history. The materialst positions that every feeling, every idea, every "superstructure" can be broken down to a physical process that can be studied, quantified, and possibly changed.

And we see that in politics too. When people successfully organize it isn't for abstract concepts. It's for concrete goals. We might use abstract terms like "freedom" or "justice" but anyone actually looking to change things has concrete ideas about what needs to be changed to achieve those goals. Oftentimes words representing abstract ideas obscure the concrete goals of a political movement and mislead the masses which is why Marxists don't like "idealism".

Dinner tonight was vegan bacon cheeseburgers with lightlife bacon and impossible burgers and they tasted pretty good.

I don't prefer making (faux)meat-forward meals but I do occasionally and I don't look down on them. I don't think the meat substitutes are that unhealthy (almost certainly healthier than what they're replacing) but they're expensive and I genuinely enjoy cooking with veggies, beans, tofu, etc. more than just a burger or whatever. I never liked the concept of a chunk of meat being the centerpiece with some sides or vegetables scattered throughout when most food has so much potential flavor. I love that veganism really challenges that dynamic, forcing the chef to create meals that integrate ingredients rather than isolate them.

"Mass unionization" would be closer to what I'm describing but the point is that some absurdly large majority of working people in the US say they like unions and are not members of one which has nothing to do with the NLRB or employers and everything to do with how the major unions choose to organize and admit members. Without those pro-union workers organizing and learning through union struggle we will never have the basis for an actual workers party because the average worker will remain ideologically incoherent and socially fragmented. Only through an actual organized and lively labor movement raising the average consciousness of the workers could a workers party actually sustain itself and carry out its work.

Labor organizing truly is everything. For some reason the US left us obsessed with the concept of a "labor" or "workers" party when only a tiny portion of the US working class are even covered by CBAs, let alone active members of their unions. If we ever wish to see working class interests expressed in US politics than it should be obvious that the workers must be organized as workers (not as communities, affinity groups, political groups, tenants etc. though there is still value in those organizations). Even where CBAs do not exist and NLRB elections and contracts aren't really viable we should be organizing groups of workers to improve their conditions where they spend most of their lives - at work. Until this happens it doesn't matter how many Mamdanis get elected, we'll never have even a modicum of power.