Democrats bet on appeals to neoconservatives — including war criminals like Dick Cheney — and touted harsh border policies, bolstering rather than challenging Republican anti-immigrant frameworks.
Kamala Harris may have relied on women to vote for abortion rights, but she promised little more than a potential return to the flawed and insufficient norm of Roe v. Wade, at best. Like President Joe Biden, she supported a genocide and failed to distinguish herself from extremist Zionists like Trump.
For Democrats, appealing to the right has been a disaster of realpolitik, especially in an electoral system that structurally favors Republicans anyway. But what’s worse, Democratic strategies have failed and harmed the most vulnerable communities both in the U.S. and those who suffer under the yoke of U.S.-backed wars.
There is an urgent need for social justice movement organizing, growing unions and union power, antagonism rather than acquiescence to existing power structures, and expansive networks of care and support. The most powerful social movements of the last decades did not primarily build on support from Democratic leadership under Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, or Joe Biden. Nor did they collapse during Trump’s first tenure.
We tried in Oregon. The real problem is that both Democrat establishment and Republican establishment hate RCV because it diminishes their power. It may be time for progressives to separate from Dems a bit more at local and state levels. Look at Osborn in NE
RCV was also on the ballot in Colorado, but for some reason they bundled it with a “jungle primary” for governor and a bunch of other seats, where the four choices on the ballot for governor in the general election would be the top four from the ranked choice primaries, regardless of party (so you could end up with four options from the same party in theory). The latter addition was pretty unpopular with both parties, who put out tons of messaging against it and especially conflated it with RCV. It got voted down with a significant margin.
I’m not opposed to either measure, but I’m really struggling to understand why they rolled the two together into one ballot initiative instead of separating it. Alas, I’m just a lowly voter not privy to such advanced political reasoning. Fortunately most of Colorado’s other ballot initiatives went well, at least according to my preferences.
Jungle primaries are great to reduce the power of nonmajority parties. If you have a primary with 4 Democrat and 4 Republican candidates, the winners will tend to be the 4 from the majority party as all votes get split relatively even. This leaves the minority party with no candidate in the general election.
It was backed and bankrolled by some local rich fuck and “adjusted” to benefit the rich ofc. It’s good that it failed IMO, unsure what Oregon’s deal about it was though
I feel like progressives separating from Dems just gave us another Trump admin.
Some counties in Oregon use RCV or Star for some elections. It’s progress.
But I agree, nobody wants to love power on either side so there’s no support. Dems are not our saviors. Up to the people.