So, I've been encountering a lot of this lately, but whenever I post in leftist spaces I'm relatively welcome in, I always get this weird mentality in the comments in which anything we do under capitalism is bad and we can't do anything in the political system because millionaires and billionaires will always outfund us and blah blah blah.
This mindset is not helpful. heck, this mindset is harmful, if it encourages lefties to give up on electoralism altogether where they dont vote because what's the point? Yes, I recognize that things are stacked against the left as they are, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. The powers of the establishment are vast but not unbeatable. We just need to approach politics another way.
To respond to the idea that FDR's new deal only happened under the threat of communism: yes, it was a political realignment. And the people really put the pressure on to either change the system or get overrun by fascists or communists. Not saying it's the only way we can get pressure, but yeah. We had a once in a generational shift sparked by the great depression and it shifted the country left.
Then after that generation started dying out, the right took back the narrative and we got reaganism. Now we're basically trying to recover from Reaganism and shift the narrative back left, but we're failing at it. Part of this is simply because we lack the organization to be effective. Many of us are learning as we go. Bernie ran in 2016 and sparked a generation of lefties, but the lefties themselves have no organization without him. And that's the problem with all realigning figures. Once the original guy is gone, the coalition begins to falter until it collapses after around 36 years. Once FDR was gone in the post 1945 environment, truman wasnt as resonated, he barely won 1948 vs Dewey. Stevenson lost in 1952 to Eisenhower, and didnt take back power until the 60s. In the 60s, we had JFK, he was shot, we got Johnson, and after Johnson the coalition fell apart.
In the Reagan alignment, Bush Sr went over like a lead balloon leading to Clinton winning in 1992. The GOP didnt get back in until 2000 with W Bush, he sucked, but due to 9/11 we stuck with him until 2008, and then ran McCain, and Obama won in 2008. And that's when the coalition of the GOP started changing. It actually started radicalizing. I dont doubt big money was part of it, and the presence of big money from the Koch brothers, etc. probably played a role, but as a frustrated conservative in that era, let me just say this: after Bush, a lot of us wanted a change. We held our nose for McCain and we kinda thought a return to a true to form version of conservatism was best. In 2008, I actually wanted Ron Paul because he represented that shift. I was initially supportive of the tea party, although after they retook congress in 2010 I quickly distanced myself from them and shifted left for reasons I've previously discussed on this blog. But you know what? The tea party's strategies worked. We had this "right of the establishment right" trend going, and we organized and took over the GOP. And then I left because I realized conservative ideals were cray cray, but honestly? The reason the right is so successful is because they ORGANIZE, they push their ideals, and they hold their politicians accountable.
The reason the left sucks is because the culture is different here, and it's quite frankly dysfunctional. And I never got into it personally. You wanna know what my response was the first time someone TRIED the blue no matter who crap with me? Basically F off. You're not entitled to my vote, the politicians are responsible to the voters, not the other way around, and you better appeal to ME if you want MY vote. And that's why I did what I did in 2016. I kind of understood that when the democrats try to bully voters, the voters can't just sit around and take it. They have to do what the tea party did. I mean, you can read all of this in the "what's the matter with Kansas" book but Thomas Frank, but Frank talked about how in the 2000s there was a similar tug of war between the conservative base and the establishment in the party. The establishment was focused on moderation and electability, and the base was like I'LL SHOW YOU UNELECTABLE and basically systematically purged their party of moderates. The establishment played chicken with voters and voters won. I was part of this myself, in the 2010 senate election here in PA with Arlen Specter. We basically ran that poor guy out of the GOP where he tried to run as a democrat, lost his primary because he wasn't a democrat, and then we got Pat Toomey in there. And that's why the GOP got so extreme. The voters pressured them to be that extreme. They wanted it. And the party became so afraid of the voters they shifted far right into dysfunction. And now they're ride or die on trump, and they've only gotten worse since then.
If anything the success of these guys is so scary I'm kind of scared of an actual leftist tea party forming. Because having witnessed the ideological purging these guys do online, even I'm not extreme enough. Which is why i butt heads with leftists so much on the internet these days. But at this point I'm trying to give the lefter than left some pointers for how to actually win in our democracy.
And ultimately? We need a movement. It needs to believe in electoralism. We need large numbers of people, and we need to be willing, like the GOP, to be able to buck their establishment politicans and get in more left wing people. I'm not advocating we go as extreme as the GOP did, but I do believe if enough voters stood up and said "enough", it could happen. But we would need to fight back against this blue no matter who culture. And that's where the left differs. left wing voters, especially libs, have this weird "harm reduction" mentality where every election is a matter of "well we cant get what we want but we must vote against the republicans." I admit, that makes sense in an election year like 2024. We got a fascist on the ticket, he's now a convicted felon, he's desperate for power, project 2025 is a thing, and honestly, if Trump wins, it screws Biden's legacy and repudiates it to such an extent we might never have the coalitional might to even begin pressuring the dems to the left again. Because the majority of the country will be like "ew UBI, remember the Biden years? Do you want inflation?" It happened with Carter, it can happen again. So even I have some nuance here and my own reasons for backing Biden align with my own long term ideological goals.
But at the same time, we need a left wing tea party. We need to make demands, we need to get out there and pressure politicians to cave to those demands, and we need to be willing to accept the consequences if this backfires. it's a risk, it's a gambit, but power concedes nothing without the hard application of pressure. SOmething leftists understand, they just suck at actually understanding the nuances of.
Speaking of which, this weird doomerism instead has them basically acting like "yeah, we need to be annoying, we need to block roads, we need to occupy college campuses, we need to be annoying, power concedes nothing without inconvenience, so we need to be annoying." It's true that a general strike or something could work, but honestly, who are you kidding? This is just an annoying tantrum over issues that most people dont care about.
Which is actually the real problem with leftists. Leftists arent a majority. They're not a majority of the country. They're not a majority of the democrats. Even during Bernie's runs, his coalition topped out at 45% of the democratic party. And a lot of them werent full on aligned with "leftists". They were libs, and many of them went on to support Clinton and Biden in 2016 and 2020. In 2020, Bernie's coalition was only around 35% of the party, with candidates like Yang, Warren, and even some moderates pulling votes from bernie.
And honestly? We've collapsed since then. This time, Biden has like 90%+ of the party backing him in primaries. It's mostly those less loyal independent leaning dems and genuine swing voters who are unhappy with him. Whereas the tea party, as it turned out was a majority of the GOP. So part of our problem, is we just dont have the numbers yet. We dont have enough people to actually throw our weight around and pressure people. And this is the big problem with leftists. A lot of them are this extremist, anti electoral minority, who is cynical and thinks the country is against them...because most people dont agree with them. Do they have a point about propaganda? Absolutely, but at the same time, they just dont support them. Like, this is the big thing, most people dont support leftists. Especially the radical ones. Even among the larger progressive left, we're only what, like 1/3 of the democrats? Maybe 2/5? That's around 15-20% of the country, assuming dems are half of it.
Now, and this is my thing, I think that if we all organized and rallied around specific issues, and formed interest groups and voting blocs and only voted for those who actually supported our policies, yeah, 15-20% is enough to throw our weight around. It's enough to throw elections for the dems if we organize and refuse to vote, and it's enough to make them give us concessions. It would drive the party left, it would force them to adopt at least SOME policies to satiate people, but the most extreme will never get all that they want. Leftists dont get all that they want because their ideas are quite frankly unpopular. And they need to coalition with progressive liberals and socdems even to get anything.
And I admit, progressives are a mixed bag too. A lot of them will, at the end of the day go for the dem nominee out of "harm reduction". keep in mind, a lot of them kinda fear the party, and the culture is different than on the GOP. Whereas I have a more bombastic in your face "ex conservative who brings tea party tactics to the democrats" mentality, a lot of them are just so defeatist and stuck in the failures of the past that nothing will ever shift them out of that. And that's a problem. We need to break that culture. We just cant do it this election when the situation is so delicate. But yes, blue no matter who every election is problematic and we need to get out of that sooner or later.
But yeah. I think a huge reason why the left doesn't get anywhere with politics is because they just are ineffective. The hard left ones are so far left and so cynical that they have all but given up on electoralism, so they larp as revolutionaries online and never do anything. SJWism is another big issue. A huge argument behind the harm reduction crap is the privilege stuff and a lot of people won't be willing to make the hard decisions to break the dems' coalition to force a change because omg what about the minorities and the women and the LGBT+, we can survive a trump presidency because they cant. Their value system is just based a little too much on consequentialism and harm reduction that they would rather just bumble their way through every cycle every 4 years electing the lesser evil, rather than being choosey and choosing the greater good. And this cultural imbalance is quite frankly why the right is so effective and the left isnt. The right will fight for what they believe in, and rock the boat and make those hard decisions to force the system to change to their whim, while the dems just end up devolving into various circlejerks of uselessness, whether it be the liberals' "lesser evilism" or the leftists anti electoralism.
No. Learn from the tea party (but dont learn too much, moderation is obviously needed), organize, and force the dems to change. That's how we accomplish change on the left. Yes, power concedes nothing about a fight, but a fight within the confines of electoralism is more than possible if the left gets their heads out of you know where. Progressive libs, get out of the harm reduction mentality and be willing to tank dems' electoral changes at the right time to be able to exercise power over them. Leftists, fricking register to vote, AND VOTE! If youre voting for jill stein, you're already ahead of the curve, and while i may not agree with that decision this time because this really is a lesser evilism election, I appreciate the spunk here. Ya know what I'm saying?
And that's my view on that.
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