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As a life long democrat this is why I hate our party. They don’t want to change and would rather fight among themselves and wonder why tf they lost every time.
I hate saying it too but feel the right is more open to younger generations the DNC needs to step up their fucking game
This couldn’t be more predictable or more obviously bullshit. The DNC is insistent on being villains. That’s fine. I’m with Hogg, I have primary contests in my district, I will be beating my feet for true progressives and there’s nothing the fucking DNC can do to stop me.
Fuck that. Hogg is trying to shake up the DNC and make them relevant and responsive to constituents, and the party apparatchik is trying to resist. Fuck them.
National parties shouldn't exist. National parties will never represent local interests. Which is what these Representatives should be representing.
How do you stop them from existing? "Hey, how about the [x+1] of us work together on the things we can agree on so we can outvote the people who don't agree with us" is a winning strategy people are going to pursue if there isn't a rule against it, but it's hard to create effective rules against that sort of thing without blowing up the whole right to free association.
That's absolutely valid question. And it's not as radical or as hard as some people might think. As recently as the early 20th century we were much closer. I'm not sure if you're familiar with the comedian Adam Conover. He had a video not too long ago specifically addressing this and making a number of good points. About how all the parties not just the Democratic party. But Democrats in particular we're much more local and Community focused before the latter 20th century. That the centralization and siloing of power in the National Party is What's led to a lot of the problems with the current Democratic party and others. And they're seeming lack of desire to actually listen to what people want.
As an anarchist I am absolutely all for Mutual Aid and cooperation. 1,000%. The problem comes from giving control to the National parties. National parties should serve the state and local parties. Not to be the leader of the people and the state parties.
Huh, I haven't had time to watch that Conover video, but it sounds a bit like arguments I heard on this "Know Your Enemy" podcast episode where they interviewed a couple of political scientists who wrote a book called "The Hollow Parties: The Many Pasts and Disordered Present of American Party Politics" that sounded interesting enough to at least get on to my reading list, so that might be something you'd dig.
At any rate, I completely agree the national Democratic party is awful and tone deaf and out of touch, and I do think the centralization doesn't help (like, if I have to hear one more liberal from California or New York tell me that Medicare for All lose us votes in the rust belt and then immediately start pushing gun control policies I'm going to scream (I scream a lot)). And I do like the idea of a political leadership who organizes around local issues and makes things like mutual aid and bail funds part of their political work (which is something the old school hyper local parties would do, though a lot of people called it corruption.
That all said, I'm not sure if it's centralization or if it's just oligarch money in a world without campaign finance laws steamrolling us, and I'm just as worried about, like, the Democratic party of Louisiana or Montana or New Hampshire or somewhere doing horrible bigoted shit that gets a local majority because redneck shitholes drive out almost everybody who disagrees eventually. Like, this is pretty much exactly how Jim Crow went for the first half of the 20th century and we do not want to go back to that.
Also, I wonder to what degree the decentralization was just a thing induced by the availability of technology when power structures came into being (like, for example I think we would have had more New York politicians running around Chicago when they were setting up if it didn't take 2 or 3 days to go back and forth at the time) and if it isn't kind of inevitable.
Either way, I definitely agree whatever the national Democratic party is doing isn't working. Also, I wouldn't exactly call myself a good spokesperson for anarchism because I've got a few state-ish sympathies in my brain (that one time the feds sent the national guard into Little Rock to fuck up some segregationist assholes was tight), but I will say that most hierarchies of authority are bullshit (maybe necessary bullshit, but they are still total bullshit that end up empowering the dumbest assholes), and anybody who says stuff like "we need to respect the office" make me want to light a bong with a burning flag and blow the smoke in their face (yes, that would be a lot of things to juggle and I would probably end up lighting myself on fire, but I guess that sends the right message too).
Centralization leads to corruption. Corruption leads to oligarchs. Oligarchs lead to centralization. As long as human nature exists they can't be separated.
Technology enabled the vast expansion of centralization. But those at least aren't so intrinsically linked. If we can survive the onslaught of AI coming there may be some hope.
Peoples and nations are natural. But relinquishing power isn't. And that's the problem. As a people/Nation there's often no problem with mutual aid. But in the last few hundred years that concept has been stretched and strained to the point of breaking. We aren't one people. We aren't truly a nation. And there is nothing wrong with that. We need to get back to a point where we can be. We need to take power back because the national parties are simply incapable of representing us, even if they wanted to.
We can still have continental unions and congresses where it makes sense. But power shouldn't be unquestionable, allowed to calcify and harden under the inscrutably detached weight of history. Anyone that would pretend not to question the founding father's should be questioned themselves.
Part of why people feel disengaged and trapped for better or for worse is that calcified bulk. Often times not understanding why something was done, and just as often not being able to truly object that something was done. Genocides being funded or ordered in our name despite our objections to it for instance. They do it precisely because they don't respect our wishes.
Power should never be secure. Never beyond being questioned. I mean just look what happened with even the slightest pushback. When CEOs found out that they were just as expendable as everyone else. When a single person took it upon themselves. The lot of them are terrified. And that's the way it should be. All power should have an expiration date. It should never be indefinite whether in simple appearance or fact. Even if that means every generation must re-ratify every treaty law and agreement. They will value it and understand it more for their participation in it.
The DNC is corrupt af.
You can tell because they're pushing out the new blood who actually wanted to win elections, not just collect cash.
I never understood the problem with what Hogg is doing. No politician should ever think their seat is safe. Every primary should be contested. If the incumbant is doing a good job, they will win, and the party gets behind them. But if the incumbent loses a primary, then they were probably not doing a good job to begin with.
What's wrong with that?
The problem is that the human trash in the Democratic Party want to sit on their fat asses and take bribes while doing nothing for the people.
Running for local, state, or congress sucks balls. You're basically a beggar, you have almost no power, you are beholden to your sponsors and party leadership, and you're expected to work long hours campaigning for shit you barely care about while pet issues get lost in the shuffle. Most of your time is on the phone making promises you won't keep to people who don't believe you. The rest of your time is spent in transit. Everyone hates you, you're surrounded by morons, and if you can't even sneeze on camera without your opponents posting the ugly sneeze face photo on twitter.
Basically, the DNC has to beg candidates to keep them around. One reward they like to dangle is support from the national committee. Blocking primary challengers helps the candidate save some cash make makes their re-election seem inevitable. It's a massive weight off, especially for younger politicians with few fonnections and fewer leverage options.
Is it right? Fuck no. I agree with you completely. But I can certainly understand why, if I were st the top of that ant hill, I wouldn't want climbers to get a foothold, either.
I could see the logic being that you'd end up spending a lot of money and resources on primaries that could be used in the general, but that's obviously only a problem because money in politics is a huge issue to begin with.
I'd still argue that the upsides (candidates that better represent the electorate, keeping the incumbents on their toes, ...) outweigh the downsides in that regard.
My cynical take.
If we are to take this at face value that the complaint was filled in February, then I believe they were not taking it seriously until after Hogg's move.
It should not take two and a half months to decide to address flaws in an election unless the organization is completely dysfunctional.
I have bad news about the DNC being a functional organization. There’s a reason Obama setup a whole separate organization and actually won. Neera Tanden runs the Center for American Progress again despite fucking it up last time and everyone they put on TV is somehow the least charismatic 75 year-old centrist in the entire caucus who just says whatever.
The DNC and entire Democrat establishment could just not exist and more Democrats would get elected. Their learned helplessness expired in like 2003 and they’re still putting it in their coffee as if nothing went sour.
I find Kenyatta’s comments to be pretty disingenuous, to be honest. He talks about how important it is that everything have the same source of truth, but then says shit like this:
“We’re not for the incumbents; we’re also not for the challengers,” he said. “We are for listening to our voters who make the decisions about who they want our nominees to be.”
That’s just laughably untrue. The DNC has almost always favored incumbents and establishment candidates, that’s why it’s so incredibly unpopular and why most Democrats don’t believe it represents their actual values.
“You look at every story that’s written about this, and it’s, ‘Oh, my gosh, the party is doing this to David.’”
No, I haven’t seen that narrative anywhere. What I have seen is a lot of disillusioned leftists pissed off on Hoggs’s behalf because of the intra-party double standard he has helped expose. Kenyatta harps about how unhelpful all the infighting is while he contributes to the infighting.
“But what we’re not for is putting our finger on the scale.”
The absolute gall.
Dem's continue the infighting apace...
Rather than coalescing actions and messaging around the fucking important fight which is attempting to save what remains of US democracy.
Dems will not help/save us. We are on our own.
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