Ever since a DSA member won the election of mayor of NYC the Dems have been waging a war against what some call the left wing of the party.
The GOP and its ilk are called the winners socialists, Marxists, Communists and those are the polite names…..the MAGA twats are trying desperately to side line the progressives in the Democratic Party.
Then the corporate Dems are doing the same thing only are being a bit more polite…..people like Carville, Plouf, Khanna, Schumer, Fetterman, by all accounts an idiot, even overpaid sports casters get into the fray like Stephen Smith, who needs to stick to calling soccer games and leave the politics to others….these twats are joining the fight against the tide of progressive candidates…..accusing them of all sorts of things…..dirt bags, factionalist, etc etc….
This is weird…..
Pundits close to the Democratic establishment have a new term to fling at the left-wing insurgents they want to disappear: “factionalism.”
Matthew Yglesias now constantly attacks socialists and their leading figures on the basis that they believe in “factionalism and anty-partyism,” or have “a whole factional project,” “factional talking point[s],” a “passion for factionalism.” At first, he took up this line over the Graham Platner candidacy, but now Yglesias uses it to refer to any attempt by the Left to replace establishment-friendly incumbents by beating them in primary races.
Center for American Progress President and CEO Neera Tanden agreed. Platner should have been solely attacking his Republican opponent, “not attacking Dems in factional fights,” she tweeted. Socialists had to be stopped from “giving away the Michigan Senate seat for factional reasons the way they tried (and likely succeeded in) giving away the Maine seat,” warned former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum.
Even the cryptocurrency industry has gotten in on the act, with crypto investment firm executive and former Securities and Exchange Commission official Justin Slaughter adding his voice to the chorus warning that the Platner scandal was the doing of “a coherent and focused faction” more interested in remaking the Democratic Party than beating Donald Trump.
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As one example, recall that to stop Bernie Sanders from winning the nomination in 2020, they coalesced around a candidate, Joe Biden, who they had openly acknowledged was cognitively unfit and whom they had little faith in. As we found out last year, Biden was so out of it, when they filmed him interacting with ordinary voters for that year’s Democratic convention, those who saw the footage were alarmed and convinced he couldn’t serve, and it required “creative” editing to salvage.
In other words, the factionalism-driven election disaster that party centrists are now accusing the Left of trying to engineer is exactly what they already did, risking handing the White House to Trump a second time because they were so desperate to stop Sanders. As Biden’s own adviser acknowledged, that this didn’t happen was only thanks to pure dumb luck, after a global pandemic meant Biden didn’t have to campaign or be regularly seen in public. Self-defeating “factionalism” is alive and well in the Democratic Party — but it’s coming from the establishment side.
https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/waging-war-on-the-left-within-the-democratic-party-wont-work/
Dems are trying hard to squash the up and coming candidates….why?
They are fighting hard….so does that mean these corporate Dems are against Healthcare, Green New Deal, Democracy for all, end the run away war machine, there is more?
If so then someone please let me know what are these cowards trying to accomplish?
Apparently it is not to make life better for the people of this nation….then what?
Personally I have never trusted centrists….they pretend that bi-partisanship is their goal but never seem to find the handle.
I will take a progressive any day over some corporate funded Democrat hands down.
Any thoughts?
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo
Same thing is happening here in Wisconsin. Jessica Hong, a democratic socialist, is the front runner in the democratic primary coming up next month and the main stream democrats are doing everything they can to derail her campaign, even though she’s polling well ahead of the republican candidate.
It’s been a real circus here. First Crowley, the Milwaukee county executive, dropped out of the race because, well, Milwaukee County is probably THE most dysfunctional, financially mismanaged government in the entire state and his campaign wasn’t going anywhere. Then our lieutenant governor withdrew from the race when it was discovered her campaign financing information was wildly inaccurate.
That basically left Hong running against Barnes, a former Lt. governor of the state who is, frankly, not very good at anything.
So now they dragged Crowley back into the race with the backing of Evers, our current governor. I don’t know why they think he’s going to do any better now than he did a few weeks ago when he dropped out. Nothing has changed at the county level. Milwaukee county is still an utter shitshow under his admiistration financially speaking, with the Milwaukee Transit system suddenly announcing that no, it’s budget wasn’t balanced at all like it had been claiming, it was really something like $30 million in the red. Multiple lawsuits involving the county jail system over non-existent health care for prisoners and suspicious deaths of multiple prisoners, widespread fraud and financial irregularities im county operated health care and support services for the poor… Well the list goes on and on.
But apparently he’s the best they got?
Right now it looks like the state DNC would rather see the republicans take the governor’s office than let Hong be their candidate.
GF that is what I mean…just what do the centrist Dems want or what do they believe in? chuq
Chuq, that’s the problem, isn’t it? Just what the hell do they believe these days? They stopped being “progressive” or “liberal” long ago. That was made abundantly clear during the Clinton administration. Except for a handful of outliers like Sanders, there isn’t anything progressive at all about the mainstream democratic party any longer. And the mainstream party has attempted to suppress any truly progressive candidates as viciously as the GOP has done. They’re utterly terrified of Hong because she represents the frustration most voters are feeling these days because if she wins, it will prove that the democrats are as morally bankrupt as the GOP.
That is the problem I have had with the Dems for a very long time….never sure of what they really stood for……chuq
Factions in politcial parties have long been a talking point over here. When I was in the Labour Party I joined an action group called ‘Militant Tendency’. That was dismissed as an ‘Extreme-Left Faction’ by the party leader at the time, and we were all expelled from membership. Now we have so many factions it is hard to keep count. ‘Starmerites’, ‘Blairites’, ‘Burnhamites’, ‘Thatcherites’, and many more. Those names are used as derogatory terms by the mainly right-wing media to describe people they are trying to criticise.
Best wishes, Pete.
Factions have destroyed many a good party….but just what do Dems stand for in the US? chuq
I think the centrists tell themselves that if they can’t win then no_one else should either. Their stupidity and cupidity gets the Republican an easy win rather than let it go to another Democrat. It’s all selfishness and doesn’t help the people.
Hugs
I agree and I have been trying to see just what these Dems are actually promising. chuq
Many shared the disappointment of Bernie Sanders’ deciding to reject joining with Jill Stein and running as independents, as put on the table by Ms. Stein. There are images of Sanders after he was bounced out of the Democratic race where his face appeared to have been punched, bruised, scratched. It would not come as any surprise to learn Sanders was given the ultimate warning: Back off or die.
Look at what happened to Charlie Kirk, Iran’s Soleimani and Khamenei, Maduro of Venezuela and others, and understand this is how the ZioFascist war criminal mass murdering mobsters operate. Multi-billionaires don’t appreciate people mucking up/interfering with their smooth-running global profit-making operations, a fact which makes the lives of political progressives particularly precarious.
Jerry profits is the answer. chuq
Sometimes, underlying realities can be difficult to accept. In other words, the truth hurts. We on the political left are beginning to come to terms with the fact that we have no friends in the political/economic establishment. We only have a well-developed sense of right and wrong, and what is important to the bulk of the American people. If we keep fighting against the corporatist neoliberal hegemony which is oppressing ordinary working folks and consumers, populist sentiment will be on our side and it will get stronger. If we keep opposing – unselectively and on principle – the aggressive militarism and inhumanity of state actors such as Israel and the Trump administration, the people will support us from across the political spectrum.
When the political class has been thoroughly captured by the alure of money, corruption becomes absolute and there is no turning back from there. The GOP was so captured long ago and then the Democratic Party succumbed. When centrists tell us what we want to hear – such as their “support” for universal healthcare, etc. – they have no intention of actually enacting it. They are just trying to “buy” our votes.
An illuminating example of this is the recent interview of congressman Adam Smith (D-WA, Seattle) by journalist Krystal Ball. Her direct challenging questions triggered an almost hostile defensive reaction in him. Smith’s rhetorical attacks against the leftwing of the party were cleverly countered by Ball pointing out that he has publicly supported the very same policies in the past. It unnerved Smith to be confronted with his own hypocrisy. On Israel, the congressman is now stuck between a rock and a hard place.
All that is well said….they ‘support’ a lot of progressive ideas that they have NO intention of passing….glad to see that I am not alone in this…..thanx Robert…..chuq