The reality of American political process is that it takes at least a billion dollars to run a Presidential campaign. (Thanks, SCOTUS) That kind of money doesn’t come from unions, social activists, or proletariat donors. It comes from corporations and billionaires, and those people don’t like revolution.
Until someone can demonstrate that you can get more votes with progressive, worker-friendly policy proposals than with a well funded propaganda machine, the DNC is going to keep chasing the less conservative billionaires. And no third party will even be relevant.
I mean we very obviously do. We have two corporate oligarch parties, but I would much rather have the tech billionaire club that brought us the Gates foundation or the Allen institute and isn’t actively trying to kill a large portion of the country than the one that sees what Israel is doing to Palestine as a good model of how to clean up the riffraff
No. We have a viable party that chases billionaires with credibility behind it, and the Democratic Party that chases billionaires while pretending that they are for working people, and kills their own viability because they have no credibility with either group.
As long as they chase billionaires, Democrats are not a viable second party. From a functional standpoint, we have only one party.
The thing is, a message that’s simple, resonates, and allows people to blame others will always win out over a message calling people to pull their own weight and do the complicated but correct things.
Idk, Harris vastly outraised Trump (over $1B in 3 months) and it… didn’t move the needle.
Progressives need to distill their ideas down into smart, easily repeated ideas (Billionaire bad, union good) that can spread via social media, aren’t inflammatory (defund the police, etc), and aren’t based on fear and loathing but rather a message of hope.
Money doesn’t win the election, it’s more of an entrance fee, and campaign financing is more complicated than just ‘the campaign.’ You have to account for PACs, party, and all the free messaging from sympathetic media outlets. Bernie pinned his hopes on going viral on social media, and mostly demonstrated that it’s not a viable strategy, at least at the Presidential level. Might work OK for smaller races, like AOC, in a geographically small, relatively young district, but not nationally. Most people actively avoid political messaging, which is a fundamental problem if you plan to rely on organic distribution of a political message through social media. Especially social media controlled by billionaires that might be hostile to messages like ‘billionaires bad, unions good.’
We certainly agree on the broad strokes. I think part of the allure of the MAGA messaging was that it was often shared by a highly approachable racist that people were already comfortable with, so the political bits could just sorta be sprinkled in as needed alongside other ideas that people already agreed with.
The reality of American political process is that it takes at least a billion dollars to run a Presidential campaign. (Thanks, SCOTUS) That kind of money doesn’t come from unions, social activists, or proletariat donors. It comes from corporations and billionaires, and those people don’t like revolution.
Until someone can demonstrate that you can get more votes with progressive, worker-friendly policy proposals than with a well funded propaganda machine, the DNC is going to keep chasing the less conservative billionaires. And no third party will even be relevant.
As long as the DNC is chasing billionaires, we have no second party.
I mean we very obviously do. We have two corporate oligarch parties, but I would much rather have the tech billionaire club that brought us the Gates foundation or the Allen institute and isn’t actively trying to kill a large portion of the country than the one that sees what Israel is doing to Palestine as a good model of how to clean up the riffraff
No. We have a viable party that chases billionaires with credibility behind it, and the Democratic Party that chases billionaires while pretending that they are for working people, and kills their own viability because they have no credibility with either group.
As long as they chase billionaires, Democrats are not a viable second party. From a functional standpoint, we have only one party.
Does viable have a different definition for you that doesn’t include winning roughly half of elections?
No, it takes a billion dollars to lose an election. Trump could of ran on a shoestring budget and he still would of won.
The thing is, a message that’s simple, resonates, and allows people to blame others will always win out over a message calling people to pull their own weight and do the complicated but correct things.
Idk, Harris vastly outraised Trump (over $1B in 3 months) and it… didn’t move the needle.
Progressives need to distill their ideas down into smart, easily repeated ideas (Billionaire bad, union good) that can spread via social media, aren’t inflammatory (defund the police, etc), and aren’t based on fear and loathing but rather a message of hope.
Money doesn’t win the election, it’s more of an entrance fee, and campaign financing is more complicated than just ‘the campaign.’ You have to account for PACs, party, and all the free messaging from sympathetic media outlets. Bernie pinned his hopes on going viral on social media, and mostly demonstrated that it’s not a viable strategy, at least at the Presidential level. Might work OK for smaller races, like AOC, in a geographically small, relatively young district, but not nationally. Most people actively avoid political messaging, which is a fundamental problem if you plan to rely on organic distribution of a political message through social media. Especially social media controlled by billionaires that might be hostile to messages like ‘billionaires bad, unions good.’
We certainly agree on the broad strokes. I think part of the allure of the MAGA messaging was that it was often shared by a highly approachable racist that people were already comfortable with, so the political bits could just sorta be sprinkled in as needed alongside other ideas that people already agreed with.