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In 2000 I voted for Ralph Nader. I despised the corporate-friendly Dem Party.
Nader had no strategy to win or to build political power.
The Green Party still has no viable strategy.
Organizations like @JusticeDems do have a viable strategy. It& #39;s working.
Let& #39;s be serious.
Nader had no strategy to win or to build political power.
The Green Party still has no viable strategy.
Organizations like @JusticeDems do have a viable strategy. It& #39;s working.
Let& #39;s be serious.
People& #39;s candidates like @AOC @CoriBush @JamaalBowmanNY @IlhanMN @RashidaTlaib @AyannaPressley @PramilaJayapal @SummerForPA @RepFiedler @NikilSaval @rick4westphilly @shannaforPA and many more are winning seats up and down the ballot across the country.
We& #39;re just getting started—we& #39;re not going to win every race. People& #39;s candidates like @BernieSanders @Booker4KY @JCisnerosTX @AndrewGillum and others came close to winning, and they worked with people& #39;s movements and organizations to build long-term power along the way.
We& #39;re getting ourselves organized into a force that can wrest the helm from the old guard. It& #39;s the only electoral path available at this moment. We know it can work because we just saw the Tea Party and Trump do it with the GOP...
It& #39;s wild how the Tea Party and Trump took over the GOP and then won the Presidency running on an agenda that excited their core base but that remains quite unpopular/extreme.
Imagine what we can do running on an agenda (e.g. #MedicareForAll) that already enjoys popular support.
Imagine what we can do running on an agenda (e.g. #MedicareForAll) that already enjoys popular support.
I get the abstract conceptual appeal of a third party. I wish we had a system that allowed for third parties to be viable.
But study your context. That& #39;s not the system we have here. It hasn& #39;t worked. It won& #39;t work.
But study your context. That& #39;s not the system we have here. It hasn& #39;t worked. It won& #39;t work.
Unless you& #39;re moving to a nation with a proportional representation parliamentary system, or you& #39;re capable of organizing a successful Constitutional Convention to restructure our system of representative government, third parties are not viable in the US at the national level.
Instead of building a dead-end third party proper, we have to build an organized faction that treats the Democratic Party not as an impenetrable monolith, but as a contestable terrain. That& #39;s exactly what @AOC, @justicedems, et al are doing. That& #39;s the path.
And if you believe we need more revolutionary change than what an electoral strategy alone will ever deliver, that doesn& #39;t excuse electoral abstentionism. If we aren& #39;t leading the insurgent tendency in non-revolutionary times we won& #39;t magically become leaders come the revolution.
I wish I had an up-to-date piece to tack to the end of this thread. In lieu of that, I wrote this in the summer of 2016 after Sanders had lost the nomination. Sadly we& #39;re in a very similar position with the presidential election and the points still apply. https://medium.com/all-of-us/we-want-a-political-revolution-first-we-must-defeat-fascism-a9df032f87d6">https://medium.com/all-of-us...
While we& #39;re depressingly in a similar place with the Presidential contest (Biden vs Trump), we& #39;re in a much stronger position with 1) all the congressional & statehouse seats we& #39;ve won these past few years and 2) the organizations and bench of skilled campaigners we& #39;ve developed.
P.S. Stay tuned for my book on this, F*ckers at the Top ( @StrongArm_Press 2021)
