Spent last night arguing with my liberal friends about Dems failing to pass min wage. Argued from the center left. Said Dem leadership needs to get its shit together and start getting the party in line. Otherwise theyre getting bodied in 2022 and never getting back in. They flipped out on me. Saying I was advocating for them to be just like Trump and the republicans.

Ive genuinely given up on them. I just dont get it. I dont know what to do. We're all queer and disabled. One of them constantly goes to protests and participates in her community. This wasn't even one of my hard left points. Like how the Dems are all psychos. Or the entire system is rigged. It was a genuine good faith argument about how the Dems need to change or we're gonna die. Im at a loss. How can you fix this?

  • TossedAccount [he/him]
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    edit-2
    4 years ago

    Lol I wish. I don't think that's likely to happen in 2022 though. If there's a countdown on the lifespan of the Dems it's still at least 10 years, if not longer (at which point it's difficult to have any meaningful foresight). The Dems also have historically thrived locally when they're the minority/opposition party; losing power means their expectations to actually do much are lowered and they can credibly convince more people that they actually want the power to change things despite the reality.

    Assuming increased radicalization resulting from Everything Still Somehow Staying the Same and Getting Worse Simultaneously, we could be looking at the Dems going the way of the Whigs within the next couple decades, but only if the Dems start to lose their ability to devour social movements, and only if they lose their ability to credibly platform sheepdogs like Bernie Sanders or Jessie Jackson. That's been their key to surviving since the Southern Dixiecrats' pivot to the GOP in the 1970s. Securing the Black vote in the wake of the destruction of radical/revolutionary orgs like the Panthers, securing women's votes after women's lib/2nd-wave feminism was fully metabolized by the liberal feminism of the 1980s-1990s, that has added decades to the Democratic Party's lifespan. Biden would have eaten shit if not for his surrogates' ability to redirect anger at police/DHS agents towards anger at Trump, for their ability to capture much of the frantic energy from the BLM revival and covid crisis and sublimate it all into Voting the Orange Fascist Out.

    Organizing for independent socialist politics including rejection of all Democrat entryism, continuing to agitate to keep common working-class people's expectations raised and organizing them to keep pushing back against reaction from liberals in governments all the way down to the local level, that's what will enable the slow death of the Democratic Party, its wane into Whig-like irrelevance.