I've been volunteering with the Dem party since high school, I've worked campaigns and elections at every level in MA, CT, and CA. What I learned is that hardly anyone at all participates. The truth is neither you nor I nor anyone else has actually witnessed a truly engaged and empowered democratic party at the PEOPLE level.
Leadership remains because people refuse to engage.
Then you are remembering incorrectly. I turned 18 the year Obama was elected. I was super dialed in and remember this process very clearly.
Yeah but people like you talk about it in a way that misses the important point fucking entirely. The ACA is the best the Republicunt party would let Obama get away with at the time, and they fought like hell against it.
Having leftists actually JOIN the Democratic and work to promote their own vision would be a huge start. I've noticed a crisis online where very leftist or progressive people are constantly talking about "those Dems" and what "they're" doing.
We start by making the conversation about "us" and not "them". Take some personal responsibility. It astounds me that leftists et al are so butthurt about the lack of their preferred ideology within Democratic ranks when hardly anybody with said ideology are making themselves known within Democratic ranks.
We do what MAGA did. Co-opt existing party infrastructure around a populist, progressive leadership and message.
Nah I'm in academia, folks in my company have great vocab. I'm talking about specifically on social media as I peruse communities that are new to or have nothing to do with me. It's just one of those things you notice when you read a lot of comments by a lot of diverse people.
I swear to God, almost nobody said milquetoast before February 2025. Now I hear it online constantly. Sometimes people spell it right, but so often it's "milktoast".
Some influencer or political commentator definitely said it recently and now everyone is repeating it everywhere. I'm not complaining, it's a great word -- but it's such a compelling example of words going viral
No, we need to take over the Democratic party. If you realistically want to actually win as opposed to grandstand.
The thing is, they DO already know the struggles of the working people. Of course they do surveys, data analysis.
The problem is that people don't believe them. Their brainwashing forces them to automatically reject our message, even though our policies poll well across the board -- when they are divorced from the messenger. Attach the name AOC to the idea universal basic income, suddenly it's communism.
The outreach they are doing is some of the most important work we can do right now. The middle class must become convinced that these people are in fact committed to their well-being before they can be mobilized by them.
When AOC/Bernie have an "army", like Trump does -- people who will trust and believe them enough to show up when and where they ask them to, to fight for what we all believe in -- THEN they can start taking very direct and meaningful action.
Think about what we are up against -- money, law, and military. The only way we push through all that is with huge populist support.
That's naïve as fuck and it's not worth the risk. We need to eject these fucking assholes. AOC on the VP will draw in all the same people who she would otherwise attract as president. Bernie is too old for many, many people. Walz is a leftist who can speak in safe, simple White-America terms aand appeal to people who would are wary about AOC. Yes, it sucks that America is sexist, but it also sucks that we are plummeting into fascism. This is a winning ticket.
I am responding specifically to the original point that the 50s represented a time where women somehow worked less than ever before. That's just not true. I am not arguing against the idea that women performed valuable labor roles.
No, I am arguing with the fact that you said the that the 50s were a "blip" of non-work in women's working history, when in fact, all the same types of work that had been available to women for hundreds of years continued to be available to them in the 50s. The whole point of the Domestic Housewife image was an artificial cultural push to get women BACK into the types of work you are describing, the pre-WWII style of work to which most women did not necessarily want to return.
Yes, there was a reactionary advertising push toward the Domestic Housewife image that happened in the 50s, but that was a direct response to the fact that in the 50s women were demanding to maintain the transition from home work to society work.
The precedent has been set. We are playing their game and these are their rules.