Agreed. While I most won’t be supporting any dems in any Federal election any time in the near future, truly progressive local candidates are worth time and effort.
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I question how much a chance progressive candidates could ever have at a local level, where things like taxes, zoning and crime are the issues. I feel like more conservative positions on these issues will always be more popular. The progressive positions that would seem more likely to be popular are those that are national in scope. Not sure what my point is. I guess I’m just doubtful that focusing on school boards and city councils will ever lead to meaningful change.
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You know what actually mobilizes people to vote? Doing what you said you would do.
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I’m at this stage. If someone has been elected to a position of power and they’re refusing to use that power for anything I care about I’m going to hold them accountable by not reelecting them.
Or even trying to do what you said you would do.
It did for the Republicans.
I just want to say even though we don’t see fully eye to eye @skydiver8 I appreciate you taking the time to explain your point of view. Something for me to think about for sure.
I won’t lie I have come pretty close to going full nihilist after Trump/Covid/Biden. That’s a big part of the lens I see the world through right now and I don’t exactly love it.
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It shouldn’t be about focusing on those, it should be about not ignoring them.
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I’m not sure I agree it did. Federal court-stacking didn’t have anything to do with local elections.
And as I said, I feel like the truly local issues are ones in which conservatives have an inherent advantage.
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It did.
But I think you’re underestimating the power of the national effort of right-wing media that helped with their success.
A great deal of hot button issues of the day just come straight from Fox News, AM radio and olds on Facebook. There needs to be a plan to deal with the amount of high volume derp that many people receive all day.
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Like, no one read the article, did they?
ALEC was funded in 1973. All the radio shit didn’t start until the early 90s. They went unchecked for 20 years gobbling up as many local seats as they possibly could. The national GOP messaging arose from that, not the other way around.
You all hate incrementalism, and yet, that’s exactly how the GOP got to where they are now. Inch by inch, local election to state election to national, two steps forward, one back…and now they’ve won. It works. And now we have to start all over again.
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Or even making a show of trying in a way that is doomed to fail. The GOP didn’t repeal Obamacare a gazillion times because they thought it would work the 70th time, they wanted the news story and the message. Biden could issue doomed-to-fail executive orders that force Republicans to file unpopular lawsuits and force the Supreme Court to make more unpopular rulings and keep the issue in the news constantly.
They got to play on a level electoral playing field, though, which is now drastically slanted in their favor.
Also this is definitely a why not both situation. All hands on the deck, full court press, etc.
I think the biggest thing Dems can actually do is show up in primaries. These fossils win because the machine is in place, but it can be overcome.
Yes, for sure. Like someone young and energetic needs to primary Pelosi and just attack her for doing nothing but symbolic bullshit on everything. They killed unarmed black men and she knelt in Kente cloth, they came for voting rights and she read a poem, they took a woman’s right to choose and she sang God Bless America.
Don’t make the election about progressive or not progressive, make it about “has a clue and tries to do stuff” and “out of touch and useless.”
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Exactly. Cut some fucking corners, throw some hail mary’s, get in the damn game. Shoot every angle, push every edge, be loud as fuck while doing it.
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Damn, now she’s talking about us moving to Amsterdam. This is what it took to wake up my wife! And I am sure she’s not the only one.
Third world shit hole country and an even worse Democratic Party.
The GOP just wants it more. They fought for it at the ground level, they organized. The left is going to sort of wallow in nihilism for a while before they get to doing any of that.
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