this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
79 points (77.2% liked)
Asklemmy
46624 readers
718 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy π
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I've seen a lot of similar comments lately. People wanting to start 3rd parties etc, because the Democrats suck so bad.
Yes, it's true. They suck, but if you're going to beat the Republicans, you'll need to look at what Trump did. He didn't start a 3rd party. No, he took the existing party and changed it into whatever the fuck it is now.
You need to change the democratic party from within too, because 3rd parties will always lose because of the first past the post. 3rd parties also have a tendency to branch out, because quite frankly, not being Democrat or Republican isn't enough of a politic in itself, and you guys don't get along well on anything else. The Republicans had this issue for a long time until Trump came along providing them with something that united their voters more than the previous politic of simply being not Democrats.
The democratic party already has a framework for running politics and they actually have some kind of democracy within that allows people to change it. Yeah, it will require a lot of work to get enough people engaged in politics to make the change, but it is absolutely much less than what is required to start a successful 3rd party.
So why not join the majority party β in this case the GOP β and reshape it again from the inside? Weβve seen the GOP is open to tectonic shifts of change, as long as itβs coming from fellow βRepublicans.β Donnie himself was a Democrat before he noticed the door to the GOP was already open wide.
It's always going to be more difficult challenging the "winning" strategy.
Democrats seem to be more open to change and internal democracy.
Whatever shed of ideology is left in either party is also pointed in different directions. Roughly described, the ideologies are (supposed to be) that left wing is taking ideas from the masses and sending them upwards through democratic elections, while right wing only accepts top down decision making. Seeing the many "Trump regret" clips, it's pretty clear that his policies did not originate from his voter base.
Another case of point is when politicians flip flop and change party. Democrats allow right wing politicians to infiltrate their party dragging them to the right, whereas you don't see someone like Bernie Sanders joining GOP to drag them towards social democracy.
The difference with the Republican party's changes with Trump and the idea of performing entryism in the Democrats to make it a worker party is that Trump's changes to the GOP are already in line with what the Bourgeoisie wants. The DNC cannot be entered and changed into a working class party because they too get their base from the bourgeoisie.
This is why revolution is necessary to gain real change in favor of the working class.
So..if that's your only option.. when are you going to start a revolution?
When the working class is organized enough for that to happen. I suggest joining a party or organization near you so that you can assist with that, wherever you live.
I'm not American but I will promise to support you if it comes to that.
The workers unionisation in my country against land owners in the 1800s would not have succeeded without international support. I'd gladly chip in for anyone attempting to do the same.
π«‘
Your problem is that Democrat politicians are also largely rich white dudes, who'd rather be republican than progressive.
.. that is why you need to join and elect other politicians.
Great way to have Republicans in power for the rest of our lives. I can't see how anyone who voted 3rd party in November can STILL think it was a smart decision despite immediately finding out it wasn't.
One of the most frustrating things in my whole life is how people simply cannot grasp that you cannot cheat code your way to voting a 3rd party presidential candidate into the Oval Office. Like, is it that difficult for people to understand that parties have to start winning locally, then getting representatives in state offices, then in the House and Senate, before a new party could even stand a snowball's chance in Hell of winning a presidential election?
These fools need to stop fucking around with presidential election votes and start voting for a 3rd party in their local/state elections. Totally fucking pointless to vote 3rd party for president. You're literally just ushering in Republican presidents by doing that shit.
As you said, it's far more realistic to put pressure on the Democratic party to change than engage in a fantasy scenario where everyone holds hands and votes a 3rd party into power out of literally nowhere.
But, as you can see by your downvotes, people just want what they want right now. Logic be damned.
"Logic be damned."
That'll be inscribed on America's tombstone.