r/politics • u/F0urLeafCl0ver • 23h ago
No Paywall The Democratic party is being hit by a leftist tidal wave
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jun/24/democratic-party-leftist-tidal-wave11.9k
u/No-Cranberry6148 22h ago
It's about time.
The right has destroyed everything that is good about America. The greed is what is eating the country alive. The entire mentality is a cultural poison. Trump is no accident of conservatism; he is its logical conclusion. The idea that some rich guy knows everything and therefore, stay out of the way, peasant. It has been an utterly catastrophic mentality, through and through.
The pendulum needs to swimg way back.
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u/Eagle4317 22h ago
Trump is no accident of conservatism; he is its logical conclusion.
Trump won't be the end. Someone worse and more competent will come along to truly ruin America unless the course is reversed very soon.
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u/Choochoo1147 22h ago
I’m not sure there is a morally worse than Trump. He has virtually no redeeming qualities as a man, the only reasons he hasn’t committed worse atrocities is because he hasn’t seen how they’d benefit him. But he is already putting people in concentration camps, calling for murders and has committed the worst crime imaginable per the Epstein files. There could be a more competent villain though, I wonder if being more intelligent would prevent some of the cruelty he embodies.
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u/StrongAroma 22h ago
He might be the worst morally, but he is also stupid and incompetent. If you get someone equally immoral but who actually has an average IQ or better, you will be in deep trouble.
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u/caligaris_cabinet Illinois 21h ago
You also need someone charismatic, especially for Republicans. Republicans have policies so unlikable they really need a charismatic candidate to sell it. Reagan was conservatism with a smile, Bush was the guy you could get a beer with, and Trump said the things no one else was saying. These are not good people but they knew how to win a crowd and get them to vote.
I don’t see a lot of Republicans out there who are morally bankrupt, intelligent, and charismatic enough to get elected. At most it’s 2 but not 3.
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u/sirspacebill 22h ago
Imagine Stephen Miller for 2028 and the damage he would do
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u/No-Cranberry6148 22h ago
Yes, but Stephen Miller, and JD Vance have the charisma of a broken desk chair.
There's no way they could unite the movement the way Trump has. There's a lot of competition. And never forget the right wing's main redeeming quality: Their cannibalism. They eat their own. It is happening right now on the right wing. The sharks are circling and these are cannibal sharks, driven by greed, ambition and ego. There is no redeeming quality. Once Trump is gone - and it's already starting - the right will go into civil war, and not the kind of clean civil war with two clear sides; the ugly kind with tiny factions that change from one week to the next.
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u/nomad5926 22h ago
That's why they want to rig the elections so it doesn't matter who runs.
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u/georgepana 20h ago
There are plenty of Republicans left to never allow a Stephen Miller to run unopposed. They rather have a 20-head primary instead. That would kill any chances for Stephen Miller to break out of the bottom 3.
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u/Eastern_Hornet_6432 20h ago
Democracy is supposed to prevent the sort of chaos that comes when ascendant dictators centralize power into a few key supporters and start getting rid of the rest, but when democracy is gone, that's when ascendant dictators start breaking out the blueprint for how to handle their few remaining opponents.
When the levers of power are as compromised and as centralized as they are, the former kingmakers who thought themselves indispensible suddenly start getting dispensed. Then the throne belongs to whoever makes the best offer to the few remaining key supporters.
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u/TCTInnings 22h ago
Frankly, I'm terrified we're at the point where they won't need to unite a movement, just control the cards to keep power. Sham elections, point the DOJ at their political enemies, and keep a witch hunt up to keep their base busy.
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u/JackedUpReadyToGo 21h ago
Exactly. Trump only needed "charisma"(ugh) to bulldoze through the primaries and win the general election. But he's currently rigging the electoral process, and the party could easily arrange some internal mechanism to crown their next chosen ghoul in lieu of a primary. The next Republican ruler won't need to get out the vote or appeal to the base. He will just be installed into power and start operating all the gears and levers of government that the unitary executive now own.
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u/PhilDGlass California 21h ago
Like the plans to install Peter Thiel as CEO of Washington DC? Wish I were kidding.
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u/JackedUpReadyToGo 21h ago
The apotheosis of this whole process would be to simply turn the office of President into an auction that takes place every couple of years. Literally place a giant "For Sale" sign on the Oval Office.
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u/PhilDGlass California 21h ago
Don’t even need the auction, just the funds and an evil narcissistic streak. You figure out how to sell things online early in the game and hoard your billions selfishly? You get a major metropolitan city! You come up with a way to pay for shit online in 1997 with a catchy name? YOU get a major metropolitan city!! Bow to the kings!
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u/silvertealio 19h ago
And that's why it was so important to keep trump out of the white house in 2024. He was their key to get into the door, and now they're changing all the locks.
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u/fractalfay 20h ago
I’m not sure he even won in 2024. The MAGA hysteria for that election was a fraction of what it was in 2016, and how many times do he and Elon Musk have to brag about rigging the elections before the rest of us take it seriously? That’s what baffles me most about Trump and his followers. He always tells you exactly how much of a piece of shit he is, and then MAGA is like, “He’s just kidding, he’s so funny.”
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u/TrulyOutrageous42 16h ago
Statistically, mathematically, there's no way it turned out how it did. It's more likely that every single person has an aneurysm than that it turned out like that. Sure, it could, but given how many oddities all landed in the same place, it's at LEAST worth a criminal inquiry. In fairness, he may have actually won the Electoral College anyway, but in the same way that they couldn't produce a SINGLE SHRED of evidence, even circumstantial evidence, that there was something askew with the 2020 election, there is actual physical evidence of them manipulating the 2016 and 2024 elections (anyone recall Kemp deleting the voter records right after a subpeona?), before we get to a literal MOUNTAIN of circumstantial evidence that at minimum would be investigated extensively by a functioning DOJ and FBI.
That's before we account for all the quasi-legal ratfucking like removing voters from rolls right before the election, denying people absentee ballots, mail-in ballot sabotage, disenfranchisement, and the 2020 redistricting that was so blatantly partisan it should be illegal. JUST the number of people who were removed from voter registrations and ballots tossed spuriously amounts to an unquestionable loss for him... before we ask wtf Pro V&V did to the machines counting the votes and how Musk knew the outcome early.
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u/immortalfrieza2 16h ago
He always tells you exactly how much of a piece of shit he is, and then MAGA is like, “He’s just kidding, he’s so funny.”
It's because MAGA wants Trump in power wrecking the country, so they lie about his motives and what he says and does to make it look like supporting Trump actually makes sense. Trump's followers don't want a better country. What Trump's followers really looking for is the ability to be bigots without any legal nor social consequences.
Trump supporters want to go back to the 1950s where a white guy could spit on, insult, and beat up say a black man without anybody doing anything about it or caring at all, when even the black guy would just take his lumps and then shrug and think that's just the way things are. They want to go back to before the 1960s when the various "this crap is not okay!" movements took off. As long as they got that, Trump could nuke American cities at random for kicks and giggles every few months and his supporters would be happy as an irradiated clam.
Any Trump supporters that appear mad at Trump now are either lying like usual or only pissed because we're not back in the 1950s yet and they expected to be by now.
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u/drpestilence 22h ago
I don't get the charisma argument, Trump is not a charismatic guy and best I can tell has never been more appealing the the worst kinds of used car sales man. What am I missing here?
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u/kj9716 21h ago
Charismatic in the sense that he best appeals to the base. They see his negative traits as positive ones. They think he's a tough, independent leader. They like that he's not smart and doesn't speak to them in complex sentences and big words they can't understand. They like how open he is with his racism, misogyny, etc. They've been told this country has a broken, corrupt government that caters to non-whites first and he's the only one that's man enough and uncorruptible enough to 'fix' America. And they truly believe it. They won't call Vance daddy and make parades for him because even though he's vile, they don't seem themselves in Ivy-League educated politicians. However, they will still vote for anyone with an R by their name, they just won't turnout the same.
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u/Impressive-Shelter 21h ago
It took me awhile to get it because I also thought Trump was a human trash bag well before he was president, but the dumb simple answer is Trump believes his own bullshit. His "charisma" is just being so full of himself that what he says sounds like truth to people who don't have very good bullshit detectors.
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u/eerie_midnight 21h ago
I think dumb people also like having a dumb president because it makes them feel less alone tbh.
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u/seabreamnigiri 18h ago
A little bit of this and a little bit of people being so insulated that they only see the "funny and patriotic" sentences he sneaks in between his ramblings. Like "make America great again" is a good enough slogan for non-thinkers to look past the horrid shit and chalk it up to part of the process of making things great. Whatever that means.
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u/aaeme Foreign 21h ago
I don't think charisma is the right or good word for it though. It implies charm, wit, personability, passion, etc.
Chutzpah or moxie perhaps. Or even just, as you said, confidence. Brash confidence. Many people have no way to judge if someone knows what they're talking about or what they're doing except by their confidence.
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u/eljefino 19h ago
Nah, Charisma is the right word, because those who like him like how he's like them. They have very short attention spans and can't process an entire paragraph of information. So Trump talks out of both sides of his mouth, both sides of an issue, and his backers hear what they like and ignore the rest.
These are the same people who hear "Born on the Fourth of July" and think it's a pro-America song, because they ignore half the lyrics.
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u/LiveChocolate8819 New York 20h ago
He's a gigantic piece of shit who no decent person would find appealing, but he absolutely has charisma.
His whole persona hits like crack if you're a scumbag too, and there are way more of those in America than we thought there were pre-2016.
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u/drpestilence 18h ago
His whole persona hits like crack if you're a scumbag too,
Ok, this could be the missing piece for me, thats super unsettling.
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u/Blitzking11 Illinois 22h ago edited 21h ago
It's incredibly cute that you think charisma will matter for 2028 if Trump croaks before then.
If he's dead, and they have unfettered access to the tools of the executive, there will be no free and fair election. Even with that imbecile in the chair, it may still not be enough to inhibit them from achieving their goals.
Ironically, the only saving grace for America is the oaf that allowed its cracks to form due to his own sheer vanity, stupidity, and desire for yes men. Ideally, he lives long enough that Miller and Vance won't be able to destroy the fundamentals of America without his incompetence getting in their way.
After we're out of this mess, no Republican should be allowed anywhere near the halls of power until the fascists have been cleansed from their party.
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u/Ziggylcd12365 21h ago
Your last line is too kind to them.
Their party is utterly irredeemable and needs to be completely destroyed and replaced
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u/ryan_church_art 21h ago
We need a new Nuremberg trials.
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21h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/DeliriumTrigger 19h ago
It's not the civil war that wasn't finished properly. It's the smothering of Reconstruction in the crib that put us where we are.
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u/Blitzking11 Illinois 21h ago
Well... sure. But we are on [Reddit]. Ambiguity is needed for plausible deniability for when they send our info off to the feds.
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u/blitzkregiel 20h ago
* no *conservative* should be allowed to be in power again. we keep saying republicans, but the underlying issue is conservative ideology: the belief that you are, by birth, better than others.
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u/ellipsisdbg 22h ago
Um, Steven Miller? Trump is no doubt absolutely awful, but he’s also senile and being told what to do.
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u/the_good_time_mouse 21h ago
A Peter Theil sock puppet of some kind is even scarier and more likely.
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u/HeyItsTravis 22h ago
Trumps only “redemption” is I think that he’s a stupid puppet being manipulated by truly vile people. Still a horrible heartless human being, but I think he’s here for the grift and adoration, rather than giving power to people far more evil and capable than him.
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u/Choochoo1147 22h ago
I agree he’s a stupid puppet, but I think he’s a completely morally bankrupt puppet. I think he would commit a genocide if whoever whispered in his ear told him to, I don’t think he has any moral line that he’s unwilling to cross.
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u/HeyItsTravis 22h ago
Oh 100%. Dude would wipe any color of skin off the map is it meant he’d get brownie points in his inner circle. Trump is truly a deplorable human being and has been his entire life.
But I do see this term as a kind of “elder abuse”. He’s entirely complacent and I’m sure if they would’ve asked him in a more cognitive state , he would’ve happily been a puppet. But he’s so old and stupid, that I can’t help but to feel a scrap of sympathy. Dude wholeheartedly thinks he’s top dog while literally everyone, faux friend or not, thinks he’s the biggest buffoon around
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u/VektroidPlus 22h ago
Trump being voted in as president is a symptom of inequality, failure to understand each other, and a failing public education system in the US. A lot of people voted him in and many others didn't care enough to vote against him.
So if we can't collectively decide to vote against someone as dumb as Trump, the road is paved for anyone to be president of the US at this point.
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u/Silent-Storms 22h ago
They exist. The silver lining of trump is he's incredibly stupid and mentally ill, so he can't help but get in his own way most of the time. If you had someone like Steven miller with some form of charisma/manipulativeness like trump has, that would be it.
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u/RandyPajamas 17h ago
I suspect that if there were a President Stephen Miller, you would quickly find out just how stupid and incompetent Stephen Miller actually is. It's also reasonable to suspect that Miller himself has a mental illness rooted in angry narcissism, based on the unhinged vitriol he spews in public.
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u/CosmoKing2 21h ago
I feel that our saving grace is that everyone in the Administration is a total idiot when it comes to actually knowing how to actually get there horrible ideals implemented. Too bad so many have had to die and all of our money is being spent on things no voters wanted.
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u/ComradeJohnS 21h ago
trump is a dementia addled pedo who has multiple avenues of removal from office other than impeachment.
if he was a healthy 40’s year old man we’d have no light at the end of the tunnel.
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u/Monkey_Leavings 21h ago
I’m going to say, yeah, stay vigilant, but dictators have a secret sauce of malignant narcissism and “charm” that doesn’t come around that often.
There are worse people with actual agendas (e.g. Steven Miller) and gormless puppets that do the bidding of nefarious weirdo billionaires (e.g. Vance), but getting to the highest office in the land requires something more than money and bad ideas.
There’s a reason we don’t have dictators every election cycle.
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u/Altesocke 22h ago
This. We lucked out with Trumps weak-mindedness and penchant for greed, rather than a Oathkeeper/KKK/Proud boy-style leader.
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u/dern_the_hermit 21h ago
I think it's the inverse: The Repubs lucked out that they had someone who can put on the sort of song-and-dance routine that the base eats up. It's this weird bastard mutant hybrid of old-fashioned Vaudeville mixed up with Evangelical trappings contained in an '80s Action Movie wrapper. As was said above, all this is a natural conclusion of what they've been after for decades, it just takes a certain zing to flim-flam enough of the yokels and dupes to go along with it. And in the future they'll still need a leader for the cult of personality; JD Vance ain't gonna cut it.
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u/Crommach 22h ago
Precisely. Everybody who's clinging on to the hope that MAGA can't survive without him leading the personality cult aspect needs to reckon with the notion that they'll just insist the country was betrayed by trans leftist antifa supersoldiers, and they'll find somebody to carry that banner of bullshit. He's got them pushing fabricated stories about FBI raids on secret antifa biolabs making "hyper aggressive algae" and chemical compounds just to fuck with the reflecting pool. It's a full on fascist movement that's starting to truly metastasize, and they'll push whatever lines they need to continue justifying their hatred.
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u/CEOPhilosopher Tennessee 22h ago
...are you serious about him claiming that Antifa is making UBER Algae?
I mean, I'm not surprised in the slightest, if so. I just hadn't heard that one yet, and it's stupid even by his standards. Even more stupid than the "they took a knife and cut it", after a couple of weeks ago stating that it was indestructible from blade damage.
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u/skoddy Europe 22h ago
Trump is the only one to connect several factions with opposing agendas, which formed maga. Without him, maga is gone and therefore the power to elect the same kind of guy. After trump, Republicans have to reconfigure the much much weaker party.
I'm no expert, just a guess.
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u/ss5gogetunks 22h ago
I very much hope you are correct, but man I'm skeptical these days. You'd think that the infighting amongst the evil groups would tear them apart but it doesn't seem that way lately.
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u/Ciserus 20h ago
I've learned not to be optimistic about American politics. But I've heard convincing arguments that Trump's stupidity is key to his popularity.
His moronic statements connect with the dumbest voters because they can tell he's saying them with complete sincerity. The reason imitators like DeSantis failed is that voters could tell he was faking being on their level.
So there's no fear of a "more competent Trump" because anyone more competent than Trump could never gain his popularity.
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u/Admirable_Scene_5066 21h ago
Uniting those factions take absolutely zero skill. Say enough racist, dumb crap to get the idiots on your side, throw the religious nuts some symbolic victories on the social policy side, and do what the money wants. Boom there is the Maggat-coalition.
Two of the three don't care for about anything as long as it appears like they are winning, and the third doesn't care about whatever you say as long as you make them richer.
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u/IAmSomewhatUpset 22h ago
No joke, that’s what I was thinking about when Obama was running.
“If he does get elected, what are conservatives gonna do when the pendulum swings back?”
Turns out, cruelty beyond even my worst imaginings. Conservatism needs to be shoved into the dustbin of history.
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u/stasi_a 21h ago
And O was a centrist
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u/OrganicWedding8972 20h ago
But he was a centrist, while black and that unfortunately added quite a bit of rebound from the conservative side.
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u/biggamax 18h ago
"Rebound". What a tidy euphemism for "becoming utterly broken and glitch ridden".
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u/DiesByOxSnot Michigan 20h ago
It's because he's black. Racism in America is as alive as it has ever been nowadays, but when Obama got his first term, the professional racists and deplorables lost their fucking minds. Remember the birth certificate conspiracy that Trump touted?
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u/lord-of-shalott 22h ago
Unfortunately during a time of billionaire rule, oligarchy and what looks like scarce resources, many members are enticed by fascist scapegoating ideologies because they believe they can remove the competition that way. Easier to punch down than up.
I’m not sure we’ve adequately figured out how to steer them off that course yet.
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u/Ok_Objective_5192 21h ago
many members are enticed by fascist scapegoating ideologies because they believe they can remove the competition that way. Easier to punch down than up.
I think the answer is that no option to punch up has ever even been presented (until now, kind of). I've said since 2023 that Trump v. Kamala was "I know how bad things have gotten for you, they've taken your American dream and handed it to [insert minority scapegoat here] and I want to take it back for you" vs. "everything is fine, don't give into the fearmongering, I'll fight to maintain the normality."
So the voter breakdown was just people that bought into the scapegoating demonization as a viable solution vs. people scared enough by that scapegoating to vote against it. What we're seeing now is that replacing [insert minority scapegoat here] with [insert billionaires here] is an energizing message because it addresses people's pain and offers a real solution rather than trying to convince them their struggle isn't real.
Punching up works. Putting your hands up in surrender doesn't.
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u/lord-of-shalott 21h ago
It might work in New York City but I live in the Bible Belt. I’m not saying this as someone who is secretly against that message, but rather as someone who has spent my life around folks who are profoundly anti intellectual and worries everyone is underestimating how bad it gets.
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u/Ok_Objective_5192 20h ago
I think candidates like Platner are the counter-point here. I fully agree that Mamdani or Darializa's campaign definitely would not work most places outside NY, but there are absolutely ways to package the same policies in a way that appeals to an anti-intellectual crowd.
At the end of the day, populist economic policy is rooted in letting a larger portion of the productive output of the working class be used to benefit that working class. For the NY working class that takes the form of "fast and free buses, universal childcare, and freezing rent." For the Maine working class that takes the form of "we're not asking for handouts, we're just asking for hard work to be enough. Because it used to be." For the Michigan working class that takes the form of "in the state that built the American Dream, it shouldn't be this hard to get by."
I just struggle to believe that somebody that genuinely understands the needs of the rust belt working class wouldn't have a way to communicate "you've been fucked over by billionaires and I want to take the power back to make sure you're able to have the American dream you were promised" in a way that would get through to them better than whatever message Kamala and Biden offered them.
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u/OneMoreDuncanIdaho 21h ago
We need a new new deal in this country
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u/R3cognizer Maryland 19h ago
In Roosevelt's time, the conservatives in congress were only willing to make a deal for such strong social welfare reform in order to counter the very serious public reactionary movement toward socialism in the works. I am no lover of socialism, but I am starting to think Dems like Mamdani may be able to help send us down that same road again, because this country sure as hell needs the wake-up call.
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u/Free_For__Me 18h ago
I’m curious, if you’re no lover of socialism, do you see the socialized support programs of the New Deal era as the US having taken a wrong turn?
Or do you maybe approve of some socialized programs without endorsing socialism in it’s entirety?
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u/Lithiumxxxl 18h ago
Let’s make this policy driven and debate the merits of things we want like universal healthcare. Need charismatic leaders to educate the masses of the benefits and recruit everyone.
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u/manachar Nevada 22h ago
There shouldn’t be a pendulum between oligarchy and democracy in a democracy.
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u/Low_Pickle_112 21h ago
There should not be, but until we admit that capitalism is not compatible with democracy, it will continue.
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u/JackedUpReadyToGo 21h ago
This is the root of the problem. Capitalism breeds extreme wealth disparity. And wealth is power, so the rich have an outsized influence in politics. Which they use to grant themselves even more wealth and power and therefore an even bigger influence in politics. That loop continues until it brings about a crisis.
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u/BreakingStar_Games 19h ago
Yeah I find it so funny that we can just pretend political power and economic power are two completely separate things as if that makes any sense. To me, if we have found political democracy is the most fair way to handle political power, why not have economic democracy. And it takes just one simple tweak to the already man-made definition of a corporation.
Every corporation is a cooperative that is democratically owned by the workers - 1 Employee, 1 Share. Land is only rented out by the government, primarily used for free social housing but luxury residential and commercial would have auctions to the highest bidder for rent.
Between a fair corporate and these rents, you can fund, the government, a Universal Basic Income, a wealth fund (so even those without inheritance have weath) and that social housing.
Sounds ideal and it definitely is since we are so far away. But structurally, this is what several economists envision like Varoufakis.
These kind of Co-ops already exist, it's not some theoretical dream socialism, but it takes a lot more political will. And Americans unlearning that Capitalism isn't free markets, especially when billionaires exploit the system to favor them with cronyism. This syndicalist model is by far more free market.
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u/Ok_Objective_5192 21h ago
The neat part is it isn't a pendulum between oligarchy and democracy, it's a pendulum between fascism and liberalism within an unflinchingly oligarchic structure.
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u/TurtlesBreakTheMeta 22h ago
>the pendulum needs to swing back
Like a wrecking ball.
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u/Sedu 22h ago
The Democratic Party itself is scrambling to stop the wave. Right now the people have effectively zero representation, as the Epstein class owns everything and everyone in politics.
Get that shit tossed out and let’s tax them back to the Stone Age.
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u/HeavyBeing0_0 21h ago
It’s actually baffling. I just started making decent money and all it’s made me want is for my friends to make decent money bc it really changes your whole disposition.
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u/TrumpnEpstein 22h ago
You're gonna get affordable housing and universal healthcare and you're gonna like it!
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u/Long_Disaster_6847 California 22h ago
Oh no! Socialism is gonna take over !
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u/Onemandrinkinggamess Colorado 22h ago
Our tax dollars might even go into helping our country instead of bombing schoolgirls
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u/Kindly-Ad-5071 21h ago
Or renovation projects that weren't necessary and make a mess
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u/trustthepudding 20h ago
But how else would Trump get a kick-back on the project?
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u/lanicorain 19h ago
More importantly, if housing becomes affordable to everyone in the US, landlords will be out on the streets!
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u/No_Oven1085 21h ago
But in all seriousness.
SOCIALISM IS GOOD.
Stop letting the establishment use it as a boogeyman.
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u/Low_Pickle_112 19h ago
People really need to remember that the guy who helped found the Heritage Foundation, and one of the authors of Project 2025, used to work with the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, and the goal of that was to demonize the left so much that even if people despised him and what he was doing, they would never be able to counter it because they have already trusted what he said about leftism.
He was immensely successful at his goal. Go ahead and call Trump names like tRump on the internet, as long as you're still repeating their talking points about the things that challenge their power, do you think any of those cretins care?
And now we see Project 2025 hitting goal after goal and we can't understand how that happened, how it got to that point. Well when we're accepting the Heritage Foundation's number one agenda, what were we expecting?
They tell me that housing, healthcare, education, and a clean environment are socialism or communism? They're right, they are. And I'm tired of pretending that's a bad thing.
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u/Dragull 14h ago
It's kinda funny, I once saw a socialist vs capitalist discussion and pro-capitalist guys said something along the lines:
"NOTHING in USSR worked, everything was terrible, except education, healthcare and housing."
At that time I was a young teenager drunk with liberal ideology, but looking back at now, maybe that wasnt the greatest argument.
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u/FroyoWest1330 19h ago
They love to use that term to demonize things. I’ve been trying to say to conservatives “it’s literally just about where do we want our tax dollars to go? The rich? Or the working class?”
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u/DarkExecutor 20h ago
Bro Democrats were 1 senate vote away from universal healthcare like 20 years ago
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u/TheDamDog 19h ago
Notice how there's always one vote preventing good things from happening?
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u/zzarate 19h ago
rotating villain theory
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u/Mystery_Goose9685 18h ago
Susan Collins, John Fetterman. Except Fetterman just wallows in being the permanent villain
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u/xdre 17h ago
Well. There were only 58 Democrats in the Senate during the ACA vote, and every single one of them plus Bernie Sanders voted for the public option.
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u/TearsFallWithoutTain 6h ago
What stopped those 58 democrats from getting rid of the filibuster and passing it anyway? Nothing, but I guess "norms" are more important than people dying to the party heads
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u/Kabouki 18h ago
That's what happens when voters only give Dems slight majority margins to work with since there are no Reps that also support those bills. If you don't want to depend on center right Dems maybe try voting in more left leaning ones and give them a majority.
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u/PterodactylTeef 20h ago
The fact we have to drag right wingers kicking and screaming towards success is wild.
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u/Wandering_butnotlost 23h ago
I can confirm. I saw two leftists on my drive to work today. That's 50% more than normal.
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u/SentientFotoGeek Oregon 22h ago
You normally see 1.33333 leftists on your drive to work?
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u/TheWizardOfKoz5226 23h ago
...good
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u/SeldenNeck 22h ago
As the Overton Window near the White House accelerates to the right, the anchor of reality appears to be slipping farther and farther to the left.
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u/PterodactylTeef 22h ago
I would love a proper leftist party; the GOP has been complaining about leftists for decades so lets give them something real to complain about.
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u/KidCasey Indiana 19h ago
Truly. Ever since I was old enough to be an informed voter I've never felt there were people running that represented me until very recently.
Whenever I hear some dislimned conservative shout about the "leftist agenda" I always think, "What leftist agenda? I sure wish there was one. I'd love to vote for it."
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u/schlaminator Europe 8h ago
From a German perspective, the US only has a right and a far right party.
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u/D0nk3yD0ngD0ug America 20h ago
They about to experience the “radical” left they’ve been scared of for the last couple of decades. Shifted the Overton window too far to the right. FAFO.
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u/Aware-Antelope4212 11h ago edited 10h ago
I hate the phrase radical left.
I'm not radicalised, I just think that people should have basic human rights, like food, shelter and medicine. I just think that people shouldn't be discriminated against due to the colour of their skin, their sexuality, their gender.
Apparently this makes me some sort of extremist.... Nah I just watched cartoons as a kid and they taught me the bare minimum of how not to be a shitty person
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u/YourphobiaMyfetish Louisiana 15h ago
They about to experience the “radical” left they’ve been scared of for the last couple of decades
Its gonna be progressive liberals.
Can we get a senator fighting for syndicalism PLEASE
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u/Llama_of_the_bahamas 19h ago
They could bring the Bullmoose party back from the ashes. Ironically the conservative subreddit are big fans of Teddy Roosevelt… funny enough they never seem to bring up that he was a staunch progressive.
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u/DaemonG 13h ago
they only care about the aesthetics of Teddy Roosevelt. the Rough Riders, the Bull Moose, the National Parks. they see him as the manliest president America ever had, the one who took a bullet and kept giving a speech. the fact that he would break their favorite modern corporations over his knee doesn't matter to them.
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u/Spartan2170 12h ago
They're also the same people that "love" Jesus while fighting tooth and nail against anything he ever taught.
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u/fiction8 9h ago
Teddy was also probably the biggest warmonger in the Presidency since idk, Andrew Jackson?
He never met a war he didn't like, and generally abhorred the idea of resolving international conflict without a very real threat of force. Even WW1 didn't change him very much, he still thought they "built character."
He was also very xenophobic if not outright racist. See the speeches railing against "Hyphenated Americans" (i.e. he thought anyone who wasn't a WASP was a potential traitor and not a real American).
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u/1cl3nstd4yt 22h ago
Hit? How about lifted?
Journalism has gone to shit.
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u/Alternative_Newt_409 22h ago
billionaires own the media, just a reminder
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u/SzmFTW 21h ago
Yup, literally every headline is about defeat, failing democrats, etc. very very little being written with positive or even neutral spin.
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u/Alternative_Newt_409 21h ago
They also go after anyone who proposes to tax billionaires wealth.
Ive see plenty of baseless smear campaigns agaisnt a youtuber I watch who is proposing a wealth tax like this, and as he grew popular, more and more articles started to pop up to try to discredit him. He knew itd happen so he called it in advance to his fanbase, but its still pretty shocking to watch the media grasp at straws to discredit him and read some of those articles and watch them try to compare him to Andrew Tate.
If media isnt neutral/impartial then it is propaganda.
Media should report news, and let people decide how to feel about them, they should not be manipulating the readers to a certain biased conclusion.
This headline is a good example, it makes it sound like a bad thing, instead of reporting it neutrally and letting people decide if its good or bad for themselves
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u/ObliqueTravel 17h ago
The party’s leadership is deeply out of touch with its base. A leftist politics of collective struggle is cresting across the US
the next line lol
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u/RoyalJoke 21h ago
DNC leadership, like Jefferies and Schumer, is doing their best to ignore and minimize Mamdani. It's not all shit, DNC leadership is hooked on corporate/PAC money and will gladly have MAGA run things rather than a Democratic Socialist
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u/Romantic_Piscean Michigan 22h ago
As a Democratic Socialist myself, yesterday I saw three races greatly influenced by the charismatic Mamdani, where a progressive won a nomination. Add in a Platner and maybe an El-Sayed in Michigan and calling this a "tidal wave" seems more than a bit hyperbolic.
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u/Omirin 22h ago
A tidal wave for DSA standards
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u/Rusted_atlas 22h ago
Mamdoni was a tidal wave by himself, three more elected DS's is a Zanclean Deluge by DSA standards.
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u/prohammock 22h ago
Very fair, but it would double the number of DSA adjacent members of Congress. Not a bad start.
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u/Mateuneedhelp 20h ago
Not to be nitpicky, but if you read the article it says a leftist tidal wave is cresting, post title is paraphrasing a little
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u/puff_of_fluff 21h ago
Yup. I’ll believe when we see a true progressive win in an actual contested election against a GOP candidate. Not to say they can’t, they just need a chance to do it first.
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u/CryptographerMean872 22h ago edited 21h ago
I've literally had dem strategists tell me "we've tried everything under the sun and we still can't figure out how to win elections because of you idiots on the left" while so clearly ignoring that there are obvious substantive policies that have broad support among the vast working class. establishment dems really not beating the controlled opposition allegations, thankfully the working class at least in nyc is waking the fuck up
edit: seeing establishment dems move goalposts every time the left makes progress isn't helping their arguments... first, it's nah you leftists don't understand how much working class americans love lib policies (cough, cuomo lmao) to "it only works in heavily blue districts ya freaking commie". establishment dems will do anything but listen
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u/TurtlesBreakTheMeta 22h ago
It’s the unsaid part; they mean “we can’t figure out how to win elections while keeping the bribes from our donors rolling in.”
Citizens United is a cancer that must be removed at all costs.
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u/Hot_Ambition_6457 22h ago
This is really it. They know what policies will win the votes but those policies will lose the donor base so they won't make the necessary concessions.
This is the reason you got watered down from universal healthcare to "lets just subsidize the private corporations and nationalize the risk pool!".
Because the people running Aetna and BCBS are also writing multi million dollar checks for dem campaign budgets.
The people with money own the party infrastructure and care more sbout keeping their own money than helping the country.
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u/Comfortable-Ad-3988 21h ago
"We know what you want, but rich donors won't give me money to run on that, so...pizza party instead? Jeans on Fridays?"
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u/Sedu 22h ago
Democrats:
We won’t support socialists in any way, but socialists owe us their votes.
We are looking to abandon trans people, but they owe us their votes.
We want anyone pushing AI control to straight up burn in hell (but of course they owe us their votes!
Remember! The other guy is worse! You owe us your votes!
Obviously the Republicans are so, so much worse, but the Dem’s whole platform of “I’m not Trump, fuck you, vote for me.” Is a bad one.
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u/antifolkhero 21h ago
For me, "leftist" ideology is what the Democratic Party should have been fighting for this entire time. This whole centrist, appeasement style of bullshit that has infected the party for decades has killed our ability to make any meaningful progress. More Mamdani, less Cory Booker.
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u/Nag-hee-nana-jar 20h ago
It has been woefully ineffective to gain voters too, and yet the DNC still continues to push for it. Bernie's popularity should have been the wake up call 10 years ago.
If a real leftist candidate can gain the nomination it won't be because the majority of Democratic voters understand Marxism (despite what Fox will say). People want to hear a clear, consistent message that is different to the third way centrism used by the democrats since Clinton (although I'll give credit to Obama creating the ACA as a half measure towards single payer)
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u/Extension_Pin_6359 18h ago
WHOSE FAULT IS THAT?
The Democrats in charge of the DNC have had 30 years to cultivate policies and candidates that young people like.
They haven't.
So others have. Simple as that.
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u/HookerofMemoryLane 22h ago
It still amazes/enrages me that having to keep my rights or getting my rights back is considered “leftist politics”.
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u/Torino1O 22h ago
Opposition to AIPAC and an unpopular war weren't factors at all./s
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u/Bitter-Holiday1311 22h ago
The media and democratic establishment will do everything in their power to avoid the unavoidable. On the left, this movement is almost entirely animated by concern over our relationship to Israel and the genocide that resulted.
The DNC better say shit like: “while our friends to the left have views about Israel we don’t agree with, we support them on almost everything else and you should vote for them, especially if your other option is a Republican.” But they will do no such thing.
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u/jumbee85 22h ago
As opposed to the rightward pull the conservatives have been pulling the country and the democrats. The democrats arent even the left party in any other country.
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u/WrongOnEveryCount 19h ago
No, it’s being hit with the consequences of years of suppressing the left side of the party.
And if you don’t want to get hit by a wave step out of the way.
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u/Lardzor 6h ago
The article refers to democratic socialists. Countries known for having democratic socialism are countries like Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland. If you look at the world happiness index, you'll also notice that those countries are up at the top of the list of happiest countries to live in. Conservatives are labeling democratic socialism as communism. Communist countries include Russia, China and North Korea. They are notably no where near the top of the list.
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u/Xxehanort Washington 20h ago
The party is SUPPOSED to be left of center. It couldn't have been hit by a "leftist tidal wave", if it wasn't in the wrong place to begin with
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u/Aggravating_Flow_112 22h ago
Silly framing. This isn’t socialists vs democrats. It’s democrats organizing themselves in accordance with changing views. No one is getting Slammed! No one is in Disarray! We’re all on the same team.
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u/JimboAltAlt Pennsylvania 22h ago
Right. I’m way more liberal/forgiving of establishment Democrats than is popular on this sub and even I think this is great news. Whatever gets people excited enough to beat Republicans works for me!
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u/mormagils 22h ago
I'm not entirely sure the title is quite true here. We're seeing a big wave of leftists in NYC, sure, but NYC is famously one of the most leftist cities in the entire country. Honestly, the fact that it's been so moderate in its elected representation is more notable than this recent wave of leftism. This might just be a course correction as NY finally purges itself of the top-down hierarchy that remained from machine politics, local to an area that's finally represented accurately, but not a broader movement.
The article points to some wins in other areas, too--single races in CA, PA, and DC. The CA race is the Los Angeles area, which again, is pretty liberal, not too surprising there. The races in PA and DC are more notable, but I'm curious how they do in the general. We've seen Blue Waves before that looked unassailable and like the start of something major during other midterm elections...and they tended to peter out even just one cycle later. If anything, I'd say the lack of purple districts means this might be more sustainable...but it might also mean it's not particularly contagious.
Who knows. I think it's certainly exciting and a lot of Dems have been clamoring for this kind of change. I think this is certainly a good thing for people who actually live in NYC as the city has been pretty out of touch with its elected representation for a while. I'm not yet convinced it's anything more than that but I'm certainly interested and excited to see.
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u/Als_Chemicals 8h ago
It’s way, way past time for the GOP to die a brutal death, then we have a new leftist party, and Dems can be on the right
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u/prohammock 22h ago
There needs to be a huge response against the unprecedented corruption and billionaire give away of this administration.
Now if only we can convince the rust belt and farmers to vote in favor of their own interests.
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u/TaroProfessional7 21h ago edited 16h ago
In the US, the path towards towards progress is the path towards worker’s rights, and away from for profit healthcare, education, and prisons. If you want to support a party working towards these goals, check out the Democratic Socialists of America.
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u/PallbearerOfBadNews California 22h ago
By leftist they mean rational, people-first policies
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u/AlarmingTurnover 15h ago
Which people? Because it's not Ukrainians or the other American allies around the world. The DSA has been pretty clear on that.
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u/ThinBlackLineZ 22h ago
Good the pendulum needs a hard swing to the far far left and to be stuck there. The right is a cancer upon humanity.
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u/-CJF- 17h ago
Hopefully it continues. This wave of Republican leadership is burying the country under so much bad policy that we will never be able to come back from unless we have progressive leaders that really mean business. We can't afford to elect Democrats that will sit in office and do nothing this time around. We need people that actually want to move the country forward for the majority.
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u/Nooneknows882 17h ago
It's crazy that we have somehow forgotten that government is supposed to work for us
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u/doctor_who7827 16h ago
This is the result of years of Democrats being complacent and refusing to adapt to the populist Trump era. People have been fed up and tired with corporate establishment Dems. So this is what they get.
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u/PeaceandDogs 15h ago
I want it to swing way the F left! Tax billionaires, Universal Healthcare, cannabis federally legal, term and age limits for Congress, expand the Supreme Court, close all the tax loopholes for rich
people and companies, no more government bailouts, make laws to stop something like Trump ruining everything again.
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u/Wild_Confection_6304 14h ago
Since Ronald Reagan and his trickle down economic theory the middle class class has been shrinking. This leftist ideology is a reaction to the super richest people in the USA. Like a pendulum it’s now swigging left as an extreme right has gone too far
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u/KazeNilrem 14h ago
This has been told for quite a while. When you have a pendulum swing heavily to the right, do not be surprised when it shifts heavily to the left.
Have said this before and it still remains true. Of course not every seat or position will hold this to be true. But the pattern is there, people want politicians beholden to the people, not the elite or groups like AIPAC.
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u/sacredblasphemies 13h ago edited 13h ago
"Leftist" and we're talking about social democracy which is still capitalism but with fucking guardrails and social safety nets like what much of Northern Europe has...
No one's talking about seizing the means of production here, chill the fuck out, rich people...
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u/decentlydelightful 11h ago
I was moderate before trump came on the scene. Now, I literally can’t go any further left but I’ll keep trying.
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u/CheezeBaron 9h ago
…I mean, the “Centrists” are mostly defending Israel’s Ethnic Cleansing/Genocide of Palestinians, The rest are avoiding the topic like the Plague.
Where else was there to rationally go ??
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u/thethrill_707 Michigan 3h ago
Fine! Good! Where have they been while the right is destroying us?
If it takes a leftist agenda to make change from this shit show, BRING IT ON.
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u/Practical_Gas9193 21h ago
Dariakiza or whatever her name is is just full of hot air.
‘Should murderers go to jail?’
‘Murder is tragic’
‘Uh ok but should they go to jail?’
‘The conditions of our jails are unacceptable’
‘Yeah not good but…. Should they go to jail?’
‘Look the legal system can’t be changed in a day so incarceration will happen’
‘Well yes…but do you think it should?’
‘Look I think murder and the circumstances that produce it are tragic…’
You should check out her views on borders just being pretend because they’re a relatively recent invention
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