Form a new party!!!
Don’t call it Labor or Labour. Don’t call it Green. Don’t call it progressive. Don’t call it socialist or liberal.
Just give it a name that people understand and don’t have preexisting bias against. “For The People”
Take on BOTH the democrats and GOP. Become popular overnight. Keep hammering home it is not about skin colour, race or country of origin, but about the billionaires that aren’t happy with paying no tax and having billions. Make it about the 99%.
It is the only way you’ll get your country back without excessive violence. The two status quo parties are hollowed out from the inside. And both are infiltrated by foreign interests.
That’s what Bernie is saying. He’s calling all progressives to run as Independent, aka No Party Preference, down ballot so we can shove the Corporate DNC into the GOP where they so desperately want to be anyway.
The Cowboy Party (Named after the most popular/recognizable NFL team)
Or, how about:
The Murica Party
Then you put Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as your president. I’ve had debates about the feasibility of this approach and this is the modern Ronald Reagan play.
The thing is, you can “not call it socialism” all you like. The fact is that it is socialism, you have to respect people’s intelligence enough to know that they will figure that out (or be easily convinced of it, if you really need an argument that doesn’t respect their intelligence). When this happens, and even moreso when you inevitably reveal yourself to be socialist, it will make you look deeply insincere and subversive, because you yourself will have fed into this taboo and not done the work of separating the term from its negative stigma or generating positive media for it.
Socialism is simply the fact of the matter and being socialist means caring about material reality enough to not just lie and gaslight as a means of convincing people. When you get attacked for being socialist, you will not be able to backpedal without sabotaging your own movement, because there will be a litany of evidence that you are socialist. As there should be, or you would not have the support of actual ideological socialists (remember that whole material reality thing I just mentioned).
The material reason why socialism is a “no-no” word is because when the right attacks it, the liberal establishment does what they always do; they backpedal. Not only does this make the right’s criticism look reasonable, because it confirms there is real reason to fear being associated with socialism; but it ensures that the people only ever hear the arguments against socialism, never the arguments for it. All of the arguments which are intrinsically associated with socialism; which you have done all this work to propagate; are never connected to it optically, and the people never learn what it actually is, leaving all of your policy open to attack.
What you are suggesting here is not the solution but exactly the issue that has brought us to this point.
The only way that you will ever launder the term “socialism” is by openly advocating for socialism and calling it what it is when you do. You just aren’t going to beat the establishment at their own game; rather, we must show the people what it is to be respected and hear policy based in material reality that will actually address their needs, and you will win support from across the spectrum.
I disagree. And I don’t mean to preach, but there is a power in words and using them (or not using them). The fight over the word and meaning of socialism is not what “the people” need right now, that can come later. This has been happening in the US closing in on a century. It’s not those tolerant of material reality (as you say) you need to convince, it’s those that would benefit from “the peoples” agenda that don’t acknowledge material reality. Ride the wave of making billionaires pay.
Socialism is a scare word they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20 years.
Socialism is what they called public power. Socialism is what they called social security.
Socialism is what they called farm price supports.
Socialism is what they called bank deposit insurance.
Socialism is what they called the growth of free and independent labor organizations.
Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people.
When the Republican candidate inscribes the slogan “Down With Socialism” on the banner of his “great crusade,” that is really not what he means at all.
What he really means is “Down with Progress–down with Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal,” and “down with Harry Truman’s fair Deal.” That’s all he means.
Harry Truman
Don’t swim against this right now. These programs from the new deal and fair deal are not even called socialist by American standards anymore.
This quote is an example of what I am talking about though. Roosevelt had to take great strides to ease the great depression, because of mass protest movements at the time openly led by socialist/communist parties, but he could not go so far as to address the economic system that created the great depression. Nor could the capitalist class allow these policies to be associated with the socialists that visibly fought for them. Doing so would threaten the power of capital; this is not long after the bolshevik revolution that created the USSR, so there was major fears of similar movements taking root in the US.
This is not Truman defending the new deal, this is him distancing the new deal from socialism.
The new deal was not socialist, which is by design, but it was made up of things that socialists would have certainly fought for and taken even further if their effort was sincerely meant to achieve socialism.
It’s time to stop letting socialism be used as a scare word. Sure, the loudest ones will continue to bury their heads in the sand, but those people weren’t going to be won over anyways. Furthermore, you aren’t going to win people over by talking down to them, and you cannot address their needs in a sincere manner if your base assumption is that they aren’t intelligent enough to understand their own lives.
edit: I’m also not suggesting that we should be fighting over “the word and meaning of socialism”; precisely the opposite, in fact. I’m saying that we should be living examples of what a socialist is and what socialists advocate for. We should be seen in our communities doing the ground work of organizing and being role models for what we believe in.
The difference between what we are accused of and what we are actually doing is stark, which can’t be pointed out if we’re constantly distancing ourselves from anyone that calls themselves socialist simply because we’re afraid of the word. There is so much present day and past evidence; from the rich history that was erased in the red scare and all of this anti-socialist sentiment; for us to draw on instead of trying to distance ourselves from the reality that what we advocate for is anti-capitalist in nature.
Buddy half of American voters voted for trump. We are well past “insulting their intelligence”. The reality is that the majority of American voters are stupid, lazy, or both.
Separately I don’t think you know what socialism is if you think progressive policies are socialist. Just because “social programs” and socialism share a common word doesn’t mean they are the same thing.
Incorrect. Only 63.7% of eligible voters turned out to vote in the 2024 US General Election.
That comes out to around 155 million voters, of which around 77 million voted for Trump or ~49.8%. Democrats on the other hand got around 75 million or ~48.3%. of the vote.
This comes out to ~31.7% of eligible voters voting Republican with ~30.8% voting Democrat.
Less than a third of Americans wanted Trump in office, not half. Let’s get the facts straight.
The reality is that the majority of American voters
Have you considered that the actions of Republicans gerrymandering voting districts to hell and passing anti-voting laws and policies, that the actions of Democrats failing to represent their constituents by veering more and more Right, and that the pressures of capitalism, rising inflation, stagnating wages, and a lack of a national holiday where people take off work to go exercise their civic duties are reasons for why more people don’t go out and vote?
Noooooooo, that can’t be. Voters are stupid. Voters are racist. Voters are lazy. And it isn’t the system that has stripped away their material needs that is the problem.
I find these types of comments funny because it shows how far in denial some people are. You arguing semantics with a random person on the internet doesn’t change reality. Trump won. Fair and square. Stop making excuses for people. No one works a 24 shift for 2 weeks straight. Considering the bullshit Trump is putting us through I think it’s safe to say that missing an hour or 2 from work every 4 years to make sure a piece of shit like him never holds office is worth the $30-$60 dollars you’ll lose for the day.
People need to wake the fuck up and stop expecting the world to work around their needs. Once every 4 years they have to vote. That is the bare minimum and people like you want to blame it on not having a voting holiday or some other excuse. In my eyes I can’t afford NOT to vote on this year shows why.
nobody disagrees lil bro, the difference is that we know it’s because people on the left simply didn’t vote. The turnout is obvious compared to 2020. The election that mattered, 2024, people simply didn’t vote.
I find your comment funny because the person you’re responding to is not the one in denial. They gave you the statistical facts of the situation. I know you want to cynically point the finger at everyone around you being dumber and lazier than you, that you have it as hard as anyone could possibly have it and you managed to do it so why don’t they. I know you want to believe America is a democracy just because we hold elections and the votes that come in are counted.
When you have a third of the population that doesn’t vote for one reason or another, when you have some voters with several times the voting power of others, and the two candidates we get to vote for are donald fucking trump or the person that somehow lost to D.F.T.; it’s time to start thinking about the systems that produced those results instead of passing the blame off on bootstraps and personal responsibility. This is the classic reactionary rhetoric that never leads to anything being fixed, because it exists so you have something to be angry at without challenging anything fundamental to the system. Because you can change systems, you cannot change people except by giving them what they need to change themselves.
The good thing is that human behavior at that scale is actually reasonably predictable, again, given the material conditions that those people are subjected to. Which is why systems are so important.
A system does what it is designed to do, and benefits who it is designed to benefit. Everything else is just noise. Stop pointing the finger at everyone around you and start pointing it up at the people who actually have a direct hand in those systems and profound power to change them. Elected or otherwise. That is the only way that change has ever been wrought in this country, even in the most dire of circumstances.
the defining trait of the Trump voters is that they’re so scared that they will vote for whoever makes them feel safe while asking absolutely nothing of them except cowed obedience
that’s the hard part. That’s why trump is so effective at winning, he somehow figured out how to make the vote for him. That’s the fundamentally difficult problem to solve, and trump is the only one who seems to have a good solution right now.
The problem is that some of them are in a cult that tells them everyone is a filthy lying criminal that wants you dead. The ones that aren’t cultists are usually just looking for the easy solution. Personal responsibility and grassroots efforts are difficult. Being angry at boogeymen and believing that one day you’ll be a billionaire or even just a millionaire is a lot easier. So believing the lies the GOP tells them, which often validate preexisting beliefs, is a lot easier and more convenient. Plus, many republicans think of the left as stuck up “intellectuals,” college educated people that get paid to do nothing but look down on them, the real working class
Plus, many republicans think of the left as stuck up “intellectuals,” college educated people that get paid to do nothing but look down on them, the real working class.
I believe this perception has the possibility to be altered.
Oh it definitely can be. I was just pointing out that it’s an additional hurdle to either tricking or actually changing the minds of Americans that are dumb enough to vote against their own interests
Simultaneously, American voters are “stupid, lazy, or both”, but intelligent and well-read enough to understand what you mean when you explain the difference between social welfare and outright socialism as you are backpedaling on being a socialist.
That being said; I’m not talking about progressive policies, I’m talking about socialism. There might be plenty of progressive policies between here and socialism, but the end of that side of the spectrum is socialism.
but 90% of these people do not care, would not care, and have no reason to care. It doesn’t matter, what matters is what appeals to them, and unfortunately it’s dumbass idiots on the internet.
Socialism? Americans would be happy to have health care, better workers‘ rights, affordable education. Just like most other advanced economies in Europe, Australia, South Korea, Japan, and so on. That’s not socialism, that’s capitalism with regulations and social programs. Nobody really wants socialism, which was as utter failure everywhere it was tried.
Anywhere socialism has existed, it has done so under the threat of global capitalism which is led by the United States. The countries you listed are only able to maintain their wealth and relative comfort by taking advantage of the global south. They benefit from obscuring that relationship so that the people who see that benefit, don’t have to reckon with the extent of it and how it enables the oppression of all of us and holds us back as a whole.
Today, the global North drains from the South commodities worth $2.2 trillion per year, in Northern prices. For perspective, that amount of money would be enough to end extreme poverty, globally, fifteen times over.
Over the whole period from 1960 to today, the drain totalled $62 trillion in real terms. If this value had been retained by the South and contributed to Southern growth, tracking with the South’s growth rates over this period, it would be worth $152 trillion today.
These are extraordinary sums. For the global North (and here we mean the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, Japan, Korea, and the rich economies of Europe), the gains are so large that, for the past couple of decades, they have outstripped the rate of economic growth. In other words, net growth in the North relies on appropriation from the rest of the world.
Let me give you the quick and dirty, oversimplified rundown of how that relationship plays out:
Power, under capitalism, resides in capital, which isn’t just money but also resources and property. In order to maintain power, capitalism requires infinite and continuous growth, which of course requires more and more resources to sustain.
Say a given country decides it would like to own its resources nationally and use the wealth generated by those resources to support the growth and welfare of their own people. Capitalist nations are able to wield state power against those countries whenever they encounter this sort of difficulty. This includes leveraging state and capitalist media to run propaganda campaigns, which sour public perception of that country’s national leadership; funding coups and covert operations against them; giving money and training to militant minority resistance groups; and when all else fails, all out war, while messy, is a very lucrative means to the end of converting the resources of global south nations into private capital for the global north.
This capital is then wielded within the capitalist world to manipulate political outcomes in favor of the private owners of capital and to prevent the working class from gaining the consciousness that would enable them to struggle for the things you mentioned; health care, worker’s rights, affordable education; as they slowly strip away what was won from past struggles.
I believe this lovely quote by Ella Baker, a major activist and leader behind the civil rights movement, is relevant to the conversation;
A nice gathering like today is not enough. You have to go back and reach out to your neighbors who don’t speak to you. And you have to reach out to your friends who think they are making it good. And get them to understand that they–as well as you and I–cannot be free in America or anywhere else where there is capitalism and imperialism. Until we can get people to recognize that they themselves have to make the struggle and have to make the fight for freedom every day in the year, every year until they win it.
Your wall of text is ahistorical. Yugoslavia is a counter example. They received American aid after WW2 to rebuild.
Half of Europe lived under real socialism and it was a fucking terrible time for many reasons.
During the Cold War the Soviet led block and the non aligned movement together had sufficient resources, knowledge, and people to get their shit together independently of the US.
Forgive me for actually caring about the subject. Clearly you have other priorities.
You mean this aid to Yugoslavia?
Omar Bradley was also an outspoken supporter of providing aid and improving relations with Yugoslavia, stating in an address to Congress on 30 November 1950 that “In the first place, if we could even take them out of the hostile camp and make them neutral, that is one step. If you can get them to act as a threat, that’s a second step. if you can get them to actively participate on your side, that is an even further step and then, of course, if you had a commitment, where their efforts were integrated with those of ours on the defence, that would still be a further step.” This marked the beginning of US military aid to a communist nation in order to counter Soviet ambitions in the region, leading to greater strives in United States–Yugoslavia relations.
The aid to Yugoslavia that is an example of the US being hostile towards socialist states and cynically providing support to anyone that would align with it against its enemies? The same US whose loans are notoriously difficult to pay back, leaving the recipients permanently indebted to the US? Surely we are talking about different aid Yugoslavia, that couldn’t be your single counter example.
During the Cold War the Soviet led block and the non aligned movement together had sufficient resources, knowledge, and people to get their shit together independently of the US.
Yes, and for the most part they did. Let’s not for get that in 1917 the Russian Empire was still a medieval state with similar technology. After the USSR was founded; their last famine would be in 1947, which happened as a result of WWII; and I’m not sure if you remember this but they would be the only other world power than the US at the time. In the 1970s, the average soviet had higher caloric intake than the average American. They beat the US to space, fought through several invasions and international boycotts, though with a much lower GDP than the US. They had to spend 15% of their GDP to the US’s 5-7% to compete with the US militarily. This was of course reasonable to do as the US had set itself out to be a hostile threat to the very idea of socialism, but was a major sacrifice nonetheless.
Standards of living in across the Soviet bloc dropped substantially in the 90s after the fall of the USSR as corrupt governments and wealthy elite privatized the USSR’s resources. Even today, Russians earn under $10,000 per capita, about the same as the Soviet Union in the 80s. There is a lot more depth and complexity to this history than you would like to make it seem.
I also don’t believe that voting is the answer to meaningful social change (though maybe it can be part of it in some contexts). But I was responding to a question that seems to.
Don’t worry about getting it right 100% perfect in the planning phase, the important thing is to just get fucking moving. If either trying to shake up the democrats or forming a third party end up being wrong, then learn from it and keep moving. We can’t afford to miss the launch window because we couldn’t agree that the plan was perfect.
Yeah, I’ve noticed that about the left in general, that the perfect is always the enemy of the good. Meanwhile the right’s out there like “yeah, a lot of you are going to die, but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make”.
Off topic but I’ve been workshopping this idea to spoil conservatives in Red States where a candidate is anti-abortion and anti-immigration but completely socialist and accountability on every other issue. I think Hallowed Party might actually be perfect for it.
yeah! keep running away and ceding terms to the billionaire media! surely if we come up with the right new magic word then everyone will understand and agree, and if fox starts demonizing “99-percenters” or whatever then we’ll just, change the name again,
Ones I like after going on a Thesaurus and US Declaration of Independence wiki hole. The ones further below are just ones I thought were okay as they came to me.
I think “Roosevelt Party” has potential. You can make two mascots for the ads, one being Theodore and the Franklin, each designed to appeal to the right or left among Americans. Theodore, for example, using guns to hunt down moose, advocating for national parks and peace with Canada.
Also, someone can commission an Epic Rap Battle between the two, who then dunk on Trump and Elon.
Doesn’t matter as long as they have to look at the two partys ® rebuplican vs (W) Straight white Christian party who love guns and hate abortion. Edit probably “Straight White Christian party” would be enough.
Patriotism necessitates seeing other nations as somehow less-than, it is an exclusionary and othering mindset that inevitably leads to bigotry. Borders are fake and shouldn’t be celebrated.
Regional pride isn’t as bad as long as there aren’t significant barriers for association. Loving a local food or art scene, or preferring a particular environment or set of social norms, is generally harmless but people still find ways to fight about it.
Sorry for clearing out my comments. It seems like a prudent thing to do.
I still think it’s probably a bad long term strategy to completely ignore it-- It’s a powerful tool that leverages seemingly innate weaknesses in people, and the left has ceded its use to the opposition.
Patriotism and nationalism haven’t always existed so they are not a law of nature.There needs to be new thinking done. People instinctively try to identify with a group or tribe. We aren’t getting rid of that.
Control it and then seek to morph it into something new and more positive. Or at least try to control it temporarily until it can be destroyed so it’s a less effective weapon for the baddies.
It’s the like the One Ring: it was kept away from the enemy so they could not abuse its power over man, but ultimately it was destroyed because it could never be wielded for good nor kept from the enemy forever.
Not trying to make light of it with the analogy, but we can’t always live in doom and gloom.
In U.S. you would still have to participate in Democratic primaries so this would come down to creating a new wing inside democratic party. This was done before and didn’t change much. The geriatric party leaders would still control everything.
In democracies with multi-party systems you have two voting rounds. In first every party presents a candidate. If anyone gets over 50% of votes he wins and that’s that. If no one gets more than 50% two candidates with most votes go to second round.
In U.S. you have only one round and usually it’s super close. If 3rd party candidate enters the race and gets even 1% of Democrat votes the Republican will win for sure. That’s why Bernie took part in Democratic primaries. His only chance was to win those and run as Democrat candidate. That’s also why Tea Party and MAGA movements were integrated into Republican party even though they started outside of it. If you want 3rd party candidates to run in elections you would have to change the system completely.
Forming a new political party in the United States is a complex process that involves navigating federal and state regulations. Here’s a step-by-step guide:
Develop your platform: Define your party’s core values, positions, and policy agenda to differentiate it from existing parties.
Create an organizational structure: Form a committee with leadership roles (chair, treasurer, secretary) and establish bylaws governing your party’s operations.
Register at the federal level: File with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) by submitting Form 1, “Statement of Organization” if you plan to raise/spend more than $1,000.
Register in individual states: Requirements vary significantly by state, but typically include:
Gathering signatures (ranging from hundreds to hundreds of thousands)
Filing specific paperwork
Paying filing fees
Meeting state-specific thresholds
Build local chapters: Establish a grassroots presence by organizing at the local level in communities across your target states.
Field candidates: Run candidates in local and state elections to build visibility and credibility.
Work toward ballot access: Each state has different requirements for getting your party on the ballot, often requiring a minimum percentage of votes in previous elections or petition signatures.
Fundraise: Develop a funding strategy that complies with campaign finance laws and regulations.
Think of forming a political party like planting a tree - you need strong roots (grassroots support), a sturdy trunk (organizational structure), and many branches (local chapters) before you can bear fruit (electoral success). The process requires patience, as most successful third parties in American history took years or decades to establish themselves.
For more detailed information, you might want to consult your state’s secretary of state office website or the FEC website (https://www.fec.gov/).
I wasn’t taking about forming a new party. There are many parties out there already. People’s Party, Green Party, Libertarian Party… I’m talking about why people don’t vote for them. If Bernie and AOC formed a new party they would face the same issues as all the other parties. In the end they would have work with Democrats and most probably would be absorbed by them.
It’s already split. If Democratic party runs another centrist/neoliberal candidate it will continue to be split. There is no indication that they’ll run anyone left of kamala.
Form a new party!!! Don’t call it Labor or Labour. Don’t call it Green. Don’t call it progressive. Don’t call it socialist or liberal.
Just give it a name that people understand and don’t have preexisting bias against. “For The People”
Take on BOTH the democrats and GOP. Become popular overnight. Keep hammering home it is not about skin colour, race or country of origin, but about the billionaires that aren’t happy with paying no tax and having billions. Make it about the 99%.
It is the only way you’ll get your country back without excessive violence. The two status quo parties are hollowed out from the inside. And both are infiltrated by foreign interests.
That’s what Bernie is saying. He’s calling all progressives to run as Independent, aka No Party Preference, down ballot so we can shove the Corporate DNC into the GOP where they so desperately want to be anyway.
IIRC, he also called for the corpocentrists to get primaried.
“People” = “Communist”
Agreed.
Gotta take a page out of idiocracy here folks.
The Cowboy Party (Named after the most popular/recognizable NFL team)
Or, how about:
The Murica Party
Then you put Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as your president. I’ve had debates about the feasibility of this approach and this is the modern Ronald Reagan play.
Please anyone but “The Turd” he’s just another slimy businessman and will grift this country out of more money.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=j_6bscCG7OA
The cowboys are probably the more at divisive team in the country.
no. cena.
The Cena who grovelled to the CCP and little pinks when he called Taiwan a country?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/26/john-cena-very-sorry-for-saying-taiwan-is-a-country
yep. almost like he could be a competent diplomat or some shit.
or, like, recognize the value of it and fund that shit.
But the WWE bookers decided that Cena now is a bad guy
okay. so is america.
and he played a pretty solid dumbfuck himbo anti-something in ‘peacemaker’.
Just call it the communist occupation party and encourage people to vote out of spite.
The 99% Party. It’s a slick way of calling it a worker’s party without sounding like a communist party.
The Bull Moose Party. It will call back to Teddy Roosevelt and the first time we used progressive policies to take back from the robber barons.
The thing is, you can “not call it socialism” all you like. The fact is that it is socialism, you have to respect people’s intelligence enough to know that they will figure that out (or be easily convinced of it, if you really need an argument that doesn’t respect their intelligence). When this happens, and even moreso when you inevitably reveal yourself to be socialist, it will make you look deeply insincere and subversive, because you yourself will have fed into this taboo and not done the work of separating the term from its negative stigma or generating positive media for it.
Socialism is simply the fact of the matter and being socialist means caring about material reality enough to not just lie and gaslight as a means of convincing people. When you get attacked for being socialist, you will not be able to backpedal without sabotaging your own movement, because there will be a litany of evidence that you are socialist. As there should be, or you would not have the support of actual ideological socialists (remember that whole material reality thing I just mentioned).
The material reason why socialism is a “no-no” word is because when the right attacks it, the liberal establishment does what they always do; they backpedal. Not only does this make the right’s criticism look reasonable, because it confirms there is real reason to fear being associated with socialism; but it ensures that the people only ever hear the arguments against socialism, never the arguments for it. All of the arguments which are intrinsically associated with socialism; which you have done all this work to propagate; are never connected to it optically, and the people never learn what it actually is, leaving all of your policy open to attack.
What you are suggesting here is not the solution but exactly the issue that has brought us to this point.
The only way that you will ever launder the term “socialism” is by openly advocating for socialism and calling it what it is when you do. You just aren’t going to beat the establishment at their own game; rather, we must show the people what it is to be respected and hear policy based in material reality that will actually address their needs, and you will win support from across the spectrum.
I disagree. And I don’t mean to preach, but there is a power in words and using them (or not using them). The fight over the word and meaning of socialism is not what “the people” need right now, that can come later. This has been happening in the US closing in on a century. It’s not those tolerant of material reality (as you say) you need to convince, it’s those that would benefit from “the peoples” agenda that don’t acknowledge material reality. Ride the wave of making billionaires pay.
Don’t swim against this right now. These programs from the new deal and fair deal are not even called socialist by American standards anymore.
This quote is an example of what I am talking about though. Roosevelt had to take great strides to ease the great depression, because of mass protest movements at the time openly led by socialist/communist parties, but he could not go so far as to address the economic system that created the great depression. Nor could the capitalist class allow these policies to be associated with the socialists that visibly fought for them. Doing so would threaten the power of capital; this is not long after the bolshevik revolution that created the USSR, so there was major fears of similar movements taking root in the US.
This is not Truman defending the new deal, this is him distancing the new deal from socialism.
The new deal was not socialist, which is by design, but it was made up of things that socialists would have certainly fought for and taken even further if their effort was sincerely meant to achieve socialism.
It’s time to stop letting socialism be used as a scare word. Sure, the loudest ones will continue to bury their heads in the sand, but those people weren’t going to be won over anyways. Furthermore, you aren’t going to win people over by talking down to them, and you cannot address their needs in a sincere manner if your base assumption is that they aren’t intelligent enough to understand their own lives.
Buddy half of American voters voted for trump. We are well past “insulting their intelligence”. The reality is that the majority of American voters are stupid, lazy, or both.
Separately I don’t think you know what socialism is if you think progressive policies are socialist. Just because “social programs” and socialism share a common word doesn’t mean they are the same thing.
Incorrect. Only 63.7% of eligible voters turned out to vote in the 2024 US General Election.
That comes out to around 155 million voters, of which around 77 million voted for Trump or ~49.8%. Democrats on the other hand got around 75 million or ~48.3%. of the vote.
This comes out to ~31.7% of eligible voters voting Republican with ~30.8% voting Democrat.
Less than a third of Americans wanted Trump in office, not half. Let’s get the facts straight.
~31.7% of Americans is not a majority, according to the American Heritage Dictionary.
Have you considered that the actions of Republicans gerrymandering voting districts to hell and passing anti-voting laws and policies, that the actions of Democrats failing to represent their constituents by veering more and more Right, and that the pressures of capitalism, rising inflation, stagnating wages, and a lack of a national holiday where people take off work to go exercise their civic duties are reasons for why more people don’t go out and vote?
Noooooooo, that can’t be. Voters are stupid. Voters are racist. Voters are lazy. And it isn’t the system that has stripped away their material needs that is the problem.
based and chad the numbers comment, we love the numbers, they dont lie.
I find these types of comments funny because it shows how far in denial some people are. You arguing semantics with a random person on the internet doesn’t change reality. Trump won. Fair and square. Stop making excuses for people. No one works a 24 shift for 2 weeks straight. Considering the bullshit Trump is putting us through I think it’s safe to say that missing an hour or 2 from work every 4 years to make sure a piece of shit like him never holds office is worth the $30-$60 dollars you’ll lose for the day.
People need to wake the fuck up and stop expecting the world to work around their needs. Once every 4 years they have to vote. That is the bare minimum and people like you want to blame it on not having a voting holiday or some other excuse. In my eyes I can’t afford NOT to vote on this year shows why.
nobody disagrees lil bro, the difference is that we know it’s because people on the left simply didn’t vote. The turnout is obvious compared to 2020. The election that mattered, 2024, people simply didn’t vote.
I find your comment funny because the person you’re responding to is not the one in denial. They gave you the statistical facts of the situation. I know you want to cynically point the finger at everyone around you being dumber and lazier than you, that you have it as hard as anyone could possibly have it and you managed to do it so why don’t they. I know you want to believe America is a democracy just because we hold elections and the votes that come in are counted.
When you have a third of the population that doesn’t vote for one reason or another, when you have some voters with several times the voting power of others, and the two candidates we get to vote for are donald fucking trump or the person that somehow lost to D.F.T.; it’s time to start thinking about the systems that produced those results instead of passing the blame off on bootstraps and personal responsibility. This is the classic reactionary rhetoric that never leads to anything being fixed, because it exists so you have something to be angry at without challenging anything fundamental to the system. Because you can change systems, you cannot change people except by giving them what they need to change themselves.
The good thing is that human behavior at that scale is actually reasonably predictable, again, given the material conditions that those people are subjected to. Which is why systems are so important.
A system does what it is designed to do, and benefits who it is designed to benefit. Everything else is just noise. Stop pointing the finger at everyone around you and start pointing it up at the people who actually have a direct hand in those systems and profound power to change them. Elected or otherwise. That is the only way that change has ever been wrought in this country, even in the most dire of circumstances.
the defining trait of the Trump voters is that they’re so scared that they will vote for whoever makes them feel safe while asking absolutely nothing of them except cowed obedience
If American voters are as stupid as you claim then it shouldn’t be hard to trick them into changing their vote.
that’s the hard part. That’s why trump is so effective at winning, he somehow figured out how to make the vote for him. That’s the fundamentally difficult problem to solve, and trump is the only one who seems to have a good solution right now.
The problem is that some of them are in a cult that tells them everyone is a filthy lying criminal that wants you dead. The ones that aren’t cultists are usually just looking for the easy solution. Personal responsibility and grassroots efforts are difficult. Being angry at boogeymen and believing that one day you’ll be a billionaire or even just a millionaire is a lot easier. So believing the lies the GOP tells them, which often validate preexisting beliefs, is a lot easier and more convenient. Plus, many republicans think of the left as stuck up “intellectuals,” college educated people that get paid to do nothing but look down on them, the real working class
I believe this perception has the possibility to be altered.
Oh it definitely can be. I was just pointing out that it’s an additional hurdle to either tricking or actually changing the minds of Americans that are dumb enough to vote against their own interests
Simultaneously, American voters are “stupid, lazy, or both”, but intelligent and well-read enough to understand what you mean when you explain the difference between social welfare and outright socialism as you are backpedaling on being a socialist.
That being said; I’m not talking about progressive policies, I’m talking about socialism. There might be plenty of progressive policies between here and socialism, but the end of that side of the spectrum is socialism.
but 90% of these people do not care, would not care, and have no reason to care. It doesn’t matter, what matters is what appeals to them, and unfortunately it’s dumbass idiots on the internet.
Socialism? Americans would be happy to have health care, better workers‘ rights, affordable education. Just like most other advanced economies in Europe, Australia, South Korea, Japan, and so on. That’s not socialism, that’s capitalism with regulations and social programs. Nobody really wants socialism, which was as utter failure everywhere it was tried.
Anywhere socialism has existed, it has done so under the threat of global capitalism which is led by the United States. The countries you listed are only able to maintain their wealth and relative comfort by taking advantage of the global south. They benefit from obscuring that relationship so that the people who see that benefit, don’t have to reckon with the extent of it and how it enables the oppression of all of us and holds us back as a whole.
Let me give you the quick and dirty, oversimplified rundown of how that relationship plays out:
Power, under capitalism, resides in capital, which isn’t just money but also resources and property. In order to maintain power, capitalism requires infinite and continuous growth, which of course requires more and more resources to sustain.
Say a given country decides it would like to own its resources nationally and use the wealth generated by those resources to support the growth and welfare of their own people. Capitalist nations are able to wield state power against those countries whenever they encounter this sort of difficulty. This includes leveraging state and capitalist media to run propaganda campaigns, which sour public perception of that country’s national leadership; funding coups and covert operations against them; giving money and training to militant minority resistance groups; and when all else fails, all out war, while messy, is a very lucrative means to the end of converting the resources of global south nations into private capital for the global north.
This capital is then wielded within the capitalist world to manipulate political outcomes in favor of the private owners of capital and to prevent the working class from gaining the consciousness that would enable them to struggle for the things you mentioned; health care, worker’s rights, affordable education; as they slowly strip away what was won from past struggles.
I believe this lovely quote by Ella Baker, a major activist and leader behind the civil rights movement, is relevant to the conversation;
Your wall of text is ahistorical. Yugoslavia is a counter example. They received American aid after WW2 to rebuild.
Half of Europe lived under real socialism and it was a fucking terrible time for many reasons.
During the Cold War the Soviet led block and the non aligned movement together had sufficient resources, knowledge, and people to get their shit together independently of the US.
Forgive me for actually caring about the subject. Clearly you have other priorities.
You mean this aid to Yugoslavia?
The aid to Yugoslavia that is an example of the US being hostile towards socialist states and cynically providing support to anyone that would align with it against its enemies? The same US whose loans are notoriously difficult to pay back, leaving the recipients permanently indebted to the US? Surely we are talking about different aid Yugoslavia, that couldn’t be your single counter example.
Yes, and for the most part they did. Let’s not for get that in 1917 the Russian Empire was still a medieval state with similar technology. After the USSR was founded; their last famine would be in 1947, which happened as a result of WWII; and I’m not sure if you remember this but they would be the only other world power than the US at the time. In the 1970s, the average soviet had higher caloric intake than the average American. They beat the US to space, fought through several invasions and international boycotts, though with a much lower GDP than the US. They had to spend 15% of their GDP to the US’s 5-7% to compete with the US militarily. This was of course reasonable to do as the US had set itself out to be a hostile threat to the very idea of socialism, but was a major sacrifice nonetheless.
Standards of living in across the Soviet bloc dropped substantially in the 90s after the fall of the USSR as corrupt governments and wealthy elite privatized the USSR’s resources. Even today, Russians earn under $10,000 per capita, about the same as the Soviet Union in the 80s. There is a lot more depth and complexity to this history than you would like to make it seem.
Not very practical while the US voting system is still first-post-the-post. Y’all need to fix that first.
there’s also a good chance that fixing it will simply fuck us even harder.
How’s that?
lets just suck off the people currently in charge until they give up the thing that keeps them in power, then. yeah. that will work.
I also don’t believe that voting is the answer to meaningful social change (though maybe it can be part of it in some contexts). But I was responding to a question that seems to.
Now is the perfect time. Breaking with the Democrats mean they have to play ball now or get electorally buried.
They will chose that latter, for sure.
If the Dems don’t want to win an election, they don’t have to run a canidate.
Unless it really works like it has the potential to. Then the repugs and dems would be totally cooked.
Don’t worry about getting it right 100% perfect in the planning phase, the important thing is to just get fucking moving. If either trying to shake up the democrats or forming a third party end up being wrong, then learn from it and keep moving. We can’t afford to miss the launch window because we couldn’t agree that the plan was perfect.
The “We can’t do this because it doesn’t solve 100% of our problems” excuse.
Yeah, I’ve noticed that about the left in general, that the perfect is always the enemy of the good. Meanwhile the right’s out there like “yeah, a lot of you are going to die, but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make”.
The halloween party
Off topic but I’ve been workshopping this idea to spoil conservatives in Red States where a candidate is anti-abortion and anti-immigration but completely socialist and accountability on every other issue. I think Hallowed Party might actually be perfect for it.
yeah! keep running away and ceding terms to the billionaire media! surely if we come up with the right new magic word then everyone will understand and agree, and if fox starts demonizing “99-percenters” or whatever then we’ll just, change the name again,
I’m pretty sure that name (or similar) has been used in ways that… don’t sit very well with people!
The Freedom party
The Justice Party
I thought the Republicans were already the “freedom” party (even though they take all of your freedoms).
Also in the Netherlands the PVV (“party for freedom”) is far right so I don’t think that name reflects the right idea.
Justice is pretty subjective and might not reflect the right idea either.
I like Freedom Party, take that word back.
The Individualist Party
Check out the Working Families party. They’re not in every state, but they’re a start.
Sadly
Ones I like after going on a Thesaurus and US Declaration of Independence wiki hole. The ones further below are just ones I thought were okay as they came to me.
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People’s Voice Party
American Party
Workers Party
Freedom Party
Citizens Party
Peoples Party
Revolutionary Party
Common Party
United Party
==============
Workers Party
Blue Collar Party
Trades Party
Skilled Party
Collar Party
Rust Party
American Party
Freedom Party
Citizen’s Party
Liberty Party
People’s Party
Civil Party
Center Party
Working Party
99 Party
99% Party
Luigi Party
Rights Party
Blue Party
United Party
Sovereign Party
Human Party
Marching Party
US Party
Founding Party
Founders Party
National Party
Revolutionary Party
Colonial Party
Fundamental Party
Common Sense Party
People’s Choice Party
People’s Voice Party
Laws of Nature Party
Nature Party
Equal Party
Pursuit of Happiness Party
Standing Party
Family Party
Native Party
Great Party
Fighting Party
Party in the USA
Let’s get this Party started
Party Animal
Birthday Party
The Party Party
I think “Roosevelt Party” has potential. You can make two mascots for the ads, one being Theodore and the Franklin, each designed to appeal to the right or left among Americans. Theodore, for example, using guns to hunt down moose, advocating for national parks and peace with Canada.
Also, someone can commission an Epic Rap Battle between the two, who then dunk on Trump and Elon.
I vote for Luigi party
White Christians who love guns and hate abortions. The clowns will never see it coming.
hate other people’s abortions.
Doesn’t matter as long as they have to look at the two partys ® rebuplican vs (W) Straight white Christian party who love guns and hate abortion. Edit probably “Straight White Christian party” would be enough.
just say “christofascist”. it’s a word, and it was made for them.
You think they know that word? You got to dumb it way down. There is a reason they made 10 fast and furious movies and 2 trump presidencies.
yeah but they don’t really know any words; they’re solipsists. material reality too hard. it’s a fascism thing.
The “Do Something” party
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Absolutely not, patriotism is just fancy nationalist cancer and “True American” messaging is a whisper away from anti-immigrant xenophobia.
Yep, classic chauvinism.
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Patriotism necessitates seeing other nations as somehow less-than, it is an exclusionary and othering mindset that inevitably leads to bigotry. Borders are fake and shouldn’t be celebrated.
Regional pride isn’t as bad as long as there aren’t significant barriers for association. Loving a local food or art scene, or preferring a particular environment or set of social norms, is generally harmless but people still find ways to fight about it.
Thanks for the discussion!
Sorry for clearing out my comments. It seems like a prudent thing to do.
I still think it’s probably a bad long term strategy to completely ignore it-- It’s a powerful tool that leverages seemingly innate weaknesses in people, and the left has ceded its use to the opposition.
Patriotism and nationalism haven’t always existed so they are not a law of nature.There needs to be new thinking done. People instinctively try to identify with a group or tribe. We aren’t getting rid of that.
Control it and then seek to morph it into something new and more positive. Or at least try to control it temporarily until it can be destroyed so it’s a less effective weapon for the baddies.
It’s the like the One Ring: it was kept away from the enemy so they could not abuse its power over man, but ultimately it was destroyed because it could never be wielded for good nor kept from the enemy forever.
Not trying to make light of it with the analogy, but we can’t always live in doom and gloom.
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EverForward Party
Onward Together Party
Inspired Collaboration Party
Positive Frontier Party
Workers Party
Blue Collar Party
Trades Party
Skilled Party
Collar Party
Rust Party
American Party
Freedom Party
Citizen’s Party
Liberty Party
People’s Party
Civil Party
Center Party
In U.S. you would still have to participate in Democratic primaries so this would come down to creating a new wing inside democratic party. This was done before and didn’t change much. The geriatric party leaders would still control everything.
Please explain
In democracies with multi-party systems you have two voting rounds. In first every party presents a candidate. If anyone gets over 50% of votes he wins and that’s that. If no one gets more than 50% two candidates with most votes go to second round.
In U.S. you have only one round and usually it’s super close. If 3rd party candidate enters the race and gets even 1% of Democrat votes the Republican will win for sure. That’s why Bernie took part in Democratic primaries. His only chance was to win those and run as Democrat candidate. That’s also why Tea Party and MAGA movements were integrated into Republican party even though they started outside of it. If you want 3rd party candidates to run in elections you would have to change the system completely.
That’s not how new parties work my friend
How do they work?
I’m not sure. Claude said
Forming a new political party in the United States is a complex process that involves navigating federal and state regulations. Here’s a step-by-step guide:
Develop your platform: Define your party’s core values, positions, and policy agenda to differentiate it from existing parties.
Create an organizational structure: Form a committee with leadership roles (chair, treasurer, secretary) and establish bylaws governing your party’s operations.
Register at the federal level: File with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) by submitting Form 1, “Statement of Organization” if you plan to raise/spend more than $1,000.
Register in individual states: Requirements vary significantly by state, but typically include:
Build local chapters: Establish a grassroots presence by organizing at the local level in communities across your target states.
Field candidates: Run candidates in local and state elections to build visibility and credibility.
Work toward ballot access: Each state has different requirements for getting your party on the ballot, often requiring a minimum percentage of votes in previous elections or petition signatures.
Fundraise: Develop a funding strategy that complies with campaign finance laws and regulations.
Think of forming a political party like planting a tree - you need strong roots (grassroots support), a sturdy trunk (organizational structure), and many branches (local chapters) before you can bear fruit (electoral success). The process requires patience, as most successful third parties in American history took years or decades to establish themselves.
For more detailed information, you might want to consult your state’s secretary of state office website or the FEC website (https://www.fec.gov/).
I wasn’t taking about forming a new party. There are many parties out there already. People’s Party, Green Party, Libertarian Party… I’m talking about why people don’t vote for them. If Bernie and AOC formed a new party they would face the same issues as all the other parties. In the end they would have work with Democrats and most probably would be absorbed by them.
Don’t don’t don’t split the vote. Not even Trump was that stupid.
It’s already split. If Democratic party runs another centrist/neoliberal candidate it will continue to be split. There is no indication that they’ll run anyone left of kamala.
Now’s the time.
Dems are managing to split the vote all on their own it seems
New Democrat(ic) Party!
The Common Sense party.
Please can we just ban the phrase “Common Sense” from politics already
Bernie is already third party, doofus. And if you want to fix anything you have to vote DNC.