the latest round of dem defense squad stuff w/booker refusing to endorse mamdani (despite endorsing NYC mayoral candidates before, and endorsing an AG in virginia this year) seems to be ending up functionally arguing "there are no disagreements in the party. everyone gets along". which is very funny
Vote blue no matter... Not you.
I am so sick of the supposed "party for the people" infighting and trying to derail anyone who does not tow the party line 100% The old guard got us Trump and it will certainly not fight him effectively if it is going after its own members. Fuck the Party. It is up to us.
Vote blue except AIPAC.
I have NEVER, EVER LIKED booker!
There is no disagreement in Ba Sing Se
There is no conflict within the Democratic Party
They do not consider the left part of the party.
I joked a month ago about how touchy partisan Dems were getting if you talked about the absurd opposition to Mamdani as something that was a problem for the party as a whole simply because it was coming from prominent Dems including ones in leadership. bsky.app/profile/that...
a thing i've really tracked here over and over is when people see this criticism of the party, even specifically of leadership, they're really taking it as an attack on *themselves*. you run into those "well *i'm* a democrat and i don't think-"? people on the bleachers who think they're playing.
like it's great they support mamdani but the actual people with power care as much about their opinion as they do mine
so much feels like liberals trying to grapple with the fact that the politicians and party they've put so much energy into defending don't care what they think either. like being dismissed and ignored isn't just for the lefties, sorry!
What I cannot grasp is why my fellow progressives/liberals don’t see that as a reason to try to make themselves heard. But I’ve spent my whole life wondering why I should be angrier at leftists who agree that Nazis and billionaires suck than I am at neoliberals claiming to be progressives.
Bernie Bro demands the peons bend the knee, wonder why they keep losing in the Midwest, film at eleven.
Lol I’m an elected Dem’s staffer, not a Bernie Bro. Also, didn’t he have a whole streak of immensely popular rallies in the Midwest earlier this year? Stop relitigating 2016 and try to at least update to 2024.
And if you’re using those rallies, how many black people were there?
Black voters told Bernie to eat shit for a reason, bro. Maybe listen to them.
i feel many have ended up at an unconscious feeling that it's impossible to budge the democrats - and I don't really blame them for getting there! the dems didn't even really respond to a coup attempt that could've killed them! no survival instinct! - so they look to where they MIGHT have influence
this is exacerbated by people who want to have faith in The System and that Our Leaders Know Best which is how you get to so much 12d chess rationalizations for stuff that's obviously just dems giving up, folding, going home early, etc
It’s also, in my expedience, so often the ones who as you put it “think they’re playing the game.” People who’ve never been to a town hall, a campaign event, a legislative office, a committee meeting. They say they’re in the party but don’t even understand how parties function, imagining a monolith
my experience*
when really the party is just a diffuse cloud of electeds, their staff (like me!), think tanks, donors, and interest groups. There is no The Party that so many imagine themselves to be in. It’s also precisely why our donor class leadership has such a death grip on power. Handily that elite seem
deadset on negatively polarizing the maximum quantity of their own base into realizing this by steadfastly refusing to acknowledge that a coup occurred.
lol remembering writing this 5 months ago when dems were taking endless 3 day weekends and confirming every piece of shit in a rush and a lot of regular Blue No Matter Who types were confused and pissed, learning that 'don't fucking talk to me, ever' includes them bsky.app/profile/spac...
do you happen to have one billion dollars in your bank account? if not, dem leadership will be unable to answer your calls at this time
Did Corey Booker endorse mayor adams? Who cares about this shit? New Yorkers will vote for who they want They could care less about Bookers lack of endorsement
Damn you beat me to it
Booker had better step up fast and now. He has a AIPAC problem
A Party that only demands your fealty but refuses to endorse your candidates isn't a party you should accept. It's a party we should aggressively seek to take over. It's their faction we must displace, hopefully by conversion, but if not violence will do. It's really up to them. They need to go.
Everyone should read the transcripts for Jared Kushner's father's confirmation hearing to become Trump's ambassador to France ....at one point he calls Booker his "very special friend," and Booker eventually voted to confirm him. Booker, Pelosi, and Jefferies are WORKING FOR THE OLIGARCHS.
It’s not funny. It’s pathetic. What ever happened to #VoteBlueNoMatterWho ?
I expected the opposition to Mamdani, honestly. These people are only “vote blue no matter who” until an actual progressive is running. I never expect them to change or learn a single lesson from the constant losing they do.
The argument I heard was “it was easier to endorse Bloomberg cause he wasn’t a senator yet!”
i don't think they even believe this, really, it's more of a reflex response, a rationalization that's locked and loaded and set on auto-fire. they see a politico article stating just plain fact like "booker refuses to endorse mamdani" and they go straight to "ragebait! bullshit!"
ragebait Russian bots fake news la la la la la
if it was untrue that he's not endorsing Mamdani that seems like a very easy thing to disprove...
it's very obvious to everyone that there are big disagreements in the party, a huge separation between electeds and voters - especially from seniority/leadership - and these reactions feel less like 'i think everything's fine' and more 'i'm trying to MAKE everything fine'.
another case of politics via The Secret. that if you just pretend everybody's getting along fine, that if you just keep sayin all the obvious gaps, the cleaving, the obvious opposing interests in the party are fake and don't exist, then things WILL get along fine, and we'll win that way.
Fuckin' Tinkerbell politics.
any form of visible conflict they rush to cram a helmet on top of, like they're trying to stop a grenade from going off. that if anybody sees these conflicts in the party, or between the voters and the electeds, then that will make those conflicts even MORE real than they already are, and explode
but all this does is make everybody else confused and put off, and that includes plenty of normie libs right now. it doesn't look like a winning strategy, it looks like just a flat denial of reality, pretending conflicts in the party just don't exist, because to acknowledge them would suck.
so much of the story in politics with dems for years, in the electeds and in pundits and voters who make excuses and rationalizations for all of them, has been a parade of "if we pretend the problem doesn't exist, then it won't exist" and hoping that'd just make conflicts, protests, and more go away
it won't work, it doesn't work, and that it very obviously doesn't work... just makes them more manic and angry and in denial. lmao.
"politico sucks!" they say and yeah politico sucks but they don't suck so bad that it warps reality and alters the timestream and makes it so the party, especially leadership/seniority, have actually been very supportive of the left flank in the party instead of trying to crush them under their heel
It's a video essay so ymmv but this basically summed up how the dem leadership feels to me at the moment: youtu.be/rl-NuJ5Ft6k?...
Booker and other corp dems won’t do it because they’re afraid of Mamadani! What he represents and wants to do is a threat to Corp Dems and their donors. Go Mr. Mamdani! Keep pushing and we will keep supporting you.
Aipac doesn't want Mamdani so Booker won't endorse him. These corrupt Democrats need to go. The people have said they want Mamdani to run.
