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Old 11-23-2020, 09:40 PM
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viscousmemories viscousmemories is offline
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Default Re: The People's Party

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Originally Posted by erimir
What has changed structurally in US politics that makes you think that a third party is more viable now than it was previously?
Nothing yet that I’m aware of, but I anticipate unprecedented domestic terrorism from the right and mass protests from the left as the pandemic and its economic impacts continue to ravage the country over the coming years and Biden keeps his promise that “nothing will fundamentally change” under his administration.

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What about the past few years of Bernie Sanders pushing the platform left and the Squad getting elected to Congress makes you think that third-party politics is more effective at achieving progressive results compared to running within the Democratic Party?
What are the substantial successes Bernie and the squad have had in pushing the party left? I know they have a big platform and they have a huge following, but from what I’ve seen the mainstream of the party spends a lot more energy on attacking and marginalizing them than on embracing their policy suggestions.

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What about the closeness of this presidential election and some of the Senate races makes you think that splitting the left-leaning vote would be any better of an idea in 2022 or 2024?
Most of the prominent Bernie supporters I know about (and many of his less prominent supporters) held their nose and voted for Biden in the general because they recognized the unique danger of Trump, so I don’t think a divided left was an issue in this election. I believe this election was as close as it was because the choice between two old white Republican men didn’t inspire more of a revolt (hence ~80 million still opting out) and the down-ballot races suffered because the Democrats made this entire election a referendum on Trump without doing a sufficient job over the past four years of tying the Republicans as a whole to Trump’s bad behavior. Right up to this very moment its virtually crickets from the Democratic leadership other than to criticize Trump for not conceding when the entire Republican apparatus is fully behind him.

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The most likely outcome is that outside of a few left-wing seats, the People's Party gets eliminated before the final round, and then the Republican or Democrat wins the seat. They won't play spoiler due to the reform, but they also won't win.
I definitely don’t know enough about electoral politics yet to comment on this.

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If you're interested in winning hearts and minds to progressivism, there are better things than third-party politics, which faces too many structural barriers in our system. You'd be better off supporting unionization efforts, for example.
Labor organizing is something I’ve been reading and thinking about a lot lately, but I’m struggling to figure out how to get more involved in that effort short of changing careers to something where unions are relevant.

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There has definitely been some talk of forgiving $50k worth of federal student loans per borrower (from Chuck Schumer, not a fringe Democrat), so there are some big executive actions on the table.

As for ripping of his mask and revealing FDR, it wouldn't matter if he literally did reveal himself to be reanimated FDR when the Senate is 50-50, or has a Republican majority, there are a lot of things that can't be done without Congress and the deciding votes are going to be either Republicans or moderate Democrats.
That comment from Schumer was nice to hear, but seems far-fetched that Austerity Joe will do it.

Yeah if Trump has demonstrated nothing else it’s that the office of the President has extraordinary power to make change without Congressional support, but Biden is all about bi-partisanship. I don’t see him bucking norms to exercise power in ways that upset his Republican friends.

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I don't actually see what value [Greenwald] provides.
I liked his interviews with Evo Morales and Lula da Silva, but I don’t really read/watch him much. What other journalists do you recommend that cover South and Central American politics well?
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