Of course, all of this is assuming voting even matters & we don't have to wait for an allied invasion to unseat orange Hitler, or his successor figurehead.

Sure, either way. Do you see some other group that's decisively seizing the moment?

Yes. Leftists. Look at Mamdani's success in NYC.

Remind me again what party he's running as

I'm not sure how you think we're making the same point. Mamdani is an outlier & the Dems want nothing to do with him, because they're a party of corpo stooges & AIPAC servants. Mamdani's LEFTISM is the crucial element, not the pretense to being a Democrat.

You said Dems are trash and your very first example of the sort of change agent you need is a Democrat. You're making my point. Mamdani isn't an outlier. He's a bellweather. We agree. Subvert the Democratic party with leftism.

Circumventing the party entirely seems a better overall strategy, since the only thing he's getting from them is a meaningless (D) in front of his name. He's winning on policy, & nobody outside of Blue MAGA believes in the party anymore.

He's a "Democrat" by name & necessity only, & the party wants nothing to do with him. These are key distinctions. The party itself, overall is still very much trash, & is in no danger of being pushed to the Left. It's actively been resisting any & all efforts to compell evolution.

Mandani is winning in spite of the party. They are in no way an asset & in every way represent an impediment.

he obviously disagrees with you and you really respect him as a politician (as do I) so you'll have to reconcile why you disagree with your favorite guy on a strategy that is objectively working for him

The strategy that's working for him has not one single fucking thing to do with running as a Democrat, & I already explained why in great detail, so no. I'm good. No "reconciliation" required, & this wilfully simplistic shit has earned you a mute.

you keep talking about "the party" as a monolithic entity when very clearly it is not and if mamdani understands why it's a necessity to run as a democrat I'm not sure why you can't pick up on it; if he thought he had a better chance of winning as an indie, I'm sure he would have done it

Remind me again which party funded a rapist in order to defeat him. 🤷‍♂️

You're making my point for me, thank you. I guess we agree. Support leftist Democrats.

"Democrat" except the entire party power structure has done everything it can to subvert his success, & learn nothing from it, while spending millions to figure out why they're losing, because they don't like the answers they're getting for free. But I'll support Leftists with Dem camouflage, sure.

People try to do that & the DNC opens a money firehose on behalf of AIPAC stooges to squash anyone Left of center, & it's usually successful. We don't have that kind of time to save the planet, let alone the country. Our elections are themselves a multi-billion dollar grift.

If the Dem power structure won't budge, then the U.S. will continue to decline. We don't have hundreds of years to sort this out anymore. Rome is on fire. The plebes are going to start eating the Patricians soon.

Don't really understand the mentality that says you can more easily subvert the entire nation than just one party; or more easily beat two entrenched parties than just one.

Oh, nothing about any of this will be easy. But we've reached the point where no matter who wins, we lose. It's just a matter of how much. Money has corrupted the entire process, so maybe decline & collapse are inevitable.

It's not that I'm pro-Democrat I'm just pro-what-works and the last time a third party won, it was Lincoln.

The two party binary works very hard to keep it that way, but they've overplayed their hand. Most Americans can't afford a $500 emergency. Multiple generations have grown up under mediocre neoliberalism & conservatism & are over both. 40-50% of the eligible population doesn't even vote.

The disparity between the buying power people have now & what their parents or grandparents had at their age has simply become too wide for the usual distractions or propaganda to be effective. People have started to catch on that they're being exploited while the oligarchy gets fat.

People also know both parties are complicit in that, though obviously Republicans are more shameless. & A lot of folks still get swept up in the vibes when Dems do empty performative bullshit, but younger folks more uniformly have had enough of both & are ready to flip the table.

A political party is not a single atomic entity. So when one thinks about a political party as a single atomic entity, one is likely to reach poor conclusions.

Flip the table then. Let's see a third party to the left of the Democrats with double digit national support. I'll support it!

The two party system is a byproduct of the first past the post voting system. Until you change that, the political landscape will always collapse into a binary system. In my lifetime there has been one serious national candidate who campaigned on changing it. Tim Walz.