So, for as much as I'm dunking on the left lately, I do still have a soft spot for them, and given my own desire for change, I do recognize that if we are ever going to accomplish changes, we need a functional left. But, ideally, this left will not look like...whatever the left looks like currently, but an actual well oiled machine that knows how to do politics without pissing people off and actually knows how to be effective. As such, I would like to outline some points that I think would help.
Summarizing my theory of political change
For me, politics is all about coalitions within the parties. The right has a diverse coalition (ideologically) of interests that bring together various groups of people into a single coalition that generally votes republican. This coalition has become shaky in recent years, but if the left doesn't shape up soon, they're leaving a golden opportunity on the table to actually enact change.
The democratic coalition is shaped by the history of the parties and the realignment that happened from the 1960s to the 1980s. During this time, we saw the fall of the new deal coalition, and the rise of the Reagan coalition. This shifted the left from dominating in the new deal era of politics to playing second fiddle to republicans. To counter the successes of this movement, the democratic party started implementing its theory of "triangulation", it basically ran to the center, double dipping and getting votes from both disaffected lefties and moderates. However, it largely abandoned its feisty new deal economic politics in the process, shifting left on cultural issues, but to the center on economics. This means that the economic left has been told to take one for the team every election since, being told their ideas are unworkable and unelectable, and that we need to compromise, while they move left and focus on identity and cultural issues. This is how we got a country with two right wing parties. The right won the economic argument in the 1980s, and the democrats just became a more moderate brand of conservative economic politics. This forced the left out of the overton window entirely.
In 2016, we saw the return to some level of left wing politics to the scene with Bernie Sanders, but because the party was firmly within the grasp of the democratic establishment, who wanted Hillary Clinton, we ended up stuck with that instead. And now the left seems to be in trouble, they managed to "psy op" us into another culture war that continues to grip the party, telling the economic left to continue shut up and settle for less. And now as we enter the post Bernie era, I'm fearing that this burgeoning left is starting to implode.
We are in a position where under the right circumstances, we could've been ascendant. We were 36 years from Reagan's win, and that's the expect time for a new realignment to occur, but instead we're basically getting Rammstein's Angst music video as the republicans morph into borderline fascists under Trump, and the democrats continue their bout of economic centrism. We could be shifting on economic terms, with the left coming back after all of this time, but instead we seem to be morphing into this much darker timeline in which the left is being destroyed once again, the center is solidifying its control over the democratic party again, and the right is becoming even more extreme.
If we want to shift things back the other way, we need to shape up and fast.
The power of electoralism: YOU NEED TO PARTICIPATE!
It's fine to have your message, but to gain power, you need votes. Voting is what determined who wins what in America. And the left, to my knowledge, doesn't vote. Many lefties aren't even registered. Many don't participate in democratic primaries. They don't vote in the general election. You need to make your voice heard by VOTING.
So many leftists have this weird defeatism where they think working within the system gets them nowhere, so they don't even try. You need to actually show up if you want your voice heard. We need to vote, we need to organize, and we need to get our crap together.
Running for office is good too. I should point this out. I admit, I dont have the balls to run myself, but I do think that we need someone to run on good ideas and to try to implement them. If you think you have what it takes and wanna put your feet to the fire, you need to get out there and do it.
Also, I'm not necessarily telling you to vote democrat. Democrats are the more left wing of the two major parties, but we all know they love to exploit the situation to bully lefties into voting for them.
Organize!
Voters need to organize into blocs. Motivated individuals who are up to the task should create advocacy groups to advocate for certain causes. They should motivate voters into blocs around specific causes and use them to pressure parties. Ultimately, the democrats respond to political pressure, and they respond to votes. What we need are groups of voters united around certain causes to say to their representatives hey, we'll vote for you if you do the thing we want, but we won't if you don't. Hold their feet to the fire. Threaten their next reelection if they don't bow to your will. Politicians are servants of the people and should listen to us. Don't let them bully you into voting for them without them giving you anything.
Drop the annoying crap
On top of rejecting electoralism and believing the system is so broken so why even bother to participate, many of them prefer to participate in...less than noble ways. They organize protests. These protests often involve stupid crap like screaming at politicians they're war criminals and harassing them, blocking roadways, gluing their hands to objects, or, in the worst case scenario, doing straight up illegal crap that borders on terrorism. Protesting is fine, it's first of our first amendment rights, but the point of protest is to bring awareness to causes, and to, once again, pressure politicians. People should stick to the above the table legal stuff, and recognize the point is to change minds. Harassing people does not change minds. Screaming people doesn't change minds. Blocking traffic annoys the crap out of people. People have places to be. And things that involve masks and certain other imagery make you look like terrorists, and sometimes you are literal terrorists. Stop that crap. None of this is effective, at worst its obnoxious and turns normie america off. I'm fully convinced the left lost the culture war in the 1960s primarily because they resorted to crap like this. And we're gonna lose again if this is how the left conducts itself.
Be realistic
So I'm gonna gatekeep the overton window right now. Drop the "leftist" crap. You know what I mean. Socialism, communism, anarchism. A huge reason the left never gets anywhere and never believes the system will respond to their needs is because they realize the system is gonna fight their extreme ideas and never give them an inch. And if you wanna make yourself worthless, go right ahead, but you are worthless if you go hard into that. We are a capitalist country, it's gonna remain this for probably the remainder of our lives, and honestly, it is so for good reason. Leftism has left a trail of blood and tyranny wherever it has been tried. That crap is outside the overton window for a reason. And that reason is, it doesn't work, it's dangerous, and there isn't a solid way to get there.
However, wanna know what has had success? Social democracy. And some socdems are actually democratic socialists. They're reformists. Bernie is like this. Bernie worked within the system. he got elected to office, he defended his position, and he's been a senator for decades now. Be like bernie. No, really. BE. LIKE. BERNIE! That's the way.
And you wanna know what Bernie had when he ran for office that many people on the left don't? HE HAD POLICIES! He had ways to accomplish everything we can propose. Some can debate the policies, or the numbers, but ultimately, bernie is a very intelligent individual who knew what he was doing. There's a reason he's the standard bearer for the left. not only did he work within electoralism, but he brushed up on policy and could write legislation in order to accomplish changes. Any changes we wanna make should be able to be passed as a bill within congress. it's all about organizing voting blocs, and organizing voters, and getting people behind politicians, and building a caucus, like the house and senate progressive caucuses, within congress.
What we need, is MORE BERNIES!
And I admit, I'm personally not someone who sees myself as running for office material. I understand policy but I'm not exactly good at playing with others, or wearing suits, or being subjected to strict work weeks that would burn me out in no time. But anyone who thinks they got what it takes, use the stuff I teach and make your own platform and run.
Btw, it doesn't have to look exactly like Bernie, some deviation is allowed. I'm a UBI guy. Bernie ain't. I'm basically more like Andrew yang in my own ideology. Basic income is my thing. Preparing us for the future without work is my thing. I have my own visions that don't necessarily align with Bernie's. And that's okay. We can work together where we fit and we can disagree where we don't. Speaking of which.
Remember my rules of purity testing
I have this old article from 2021 that I still stand by that outlines my own approach to purity testing. I stand by it. Focus on your top issues, dont worry about the smaller stuff, and be happy with compromises and partial progress when you have to. We all have our visions, but within democracy, we're not all gonna agree. We gotta build coalitions. Find agreement where we do, disagree where we don't, but don't get so rigid you get mad because someone isn't literally 100% of what you want. 99% is still good. Heck, 90% is still great. 80% even is still good as far as the top stuff goes. You might have some limit where below a certain point you might rethink working with someone (I'd say somewhere around 40-60% might be good here), but if you largely agree, even if you disagree in details, you found a good ally. I'm not saying you shouldn't have purity tests. but you kinda gotta be realistic and understand you operate in a world where you sometimes disagree with people. And you're gonna have to deal with that.
Drop the identity politics
Look, I'm fully convinced identity politics is a psy op by the elites to divide and conquer the left. It's done a good job taking the wind out of the sails of occupy wall street and Bernie's 2016 campaign, and it's poison for everything it touches. It's fine to be for equal rights for racial minorities, or women's rights, or lgbt+ rights, and for some, maybe that IS your thing. And we're gonna have to coalition with you if you wanna win. But...there comes a time where we need some reciprocity here. If we want economic issues like UBI and M4A, and you want whatever you want, we're gonna need to come to an agreement somewhere. At some point, you're gonna have to give us some of what we want, if you want us to work with you on what you want.
Ideally, we won't really lean hard into the identity stuff at all. Really, that stuff is like god making people speak different languages on the tower of babel, it serves to distract and separate us. But if we do...
Learn the art of "dog whistle politics"
This is something that the SJWs should understand. The right didnt accomplish their goals necessarily by loudly calling everyone "that word" (to reference Lee Atwater, the republican strategic who devised it) on the matter. You kind of use coded language. You get it under the radar, so you get what you want, without loudly yelling it in a way that alienates people. In this case, you can get most of what you want just by pushing for libertarianism. I mean, you think most people aren't pro choice push comes to shove? Pro gay marriage? of course they are. They just resent SJWs shoving this stuff in their face. SJWs do things in the worst possible way. They're loud, they're annoying, they're obnoxious, they scream at you when you don't agree with them, they scream at you when you do agree with them but with slight nuance. No one likes these people. And in the country at large, they lose normies. They literally took obama's coalition of the ascendant and threw it in the toilet. Of course, maybe that was the point. Couldn't let the working class actually gain ground in this country after all... But I digress.
Learn foreign policy
Okay, so...this is a message for the left on foreign policy. Yeah, I get it, you don't like interventionism. You think our actions in the world have been damaging, so you wanna withdraw. You might think we're even evil. I won't go that far, I kinda understand that the world is nuanced. But know this, we gotta play this game of chess whether we like it or not.
I like to call myself a "reluctant imperialist". It's like the song "we didn't start the fire". But it's burning, it will burn even if we try to make it stop burning, and if we stop, we're just empowering our enemies. Maybe I just have major ideological differences with the radical left, as I am more in the reformist socdem tradition, but if anyone is gonna be the hegemon or "imperialist", the US/Europe is the objectively best option. Russia or China is just gonna screw things up. They're authoritarians. They're not good guys. Whatever flaws we have, they're worse.
And heck, maybe if the left stopped trying to trend into literal leftism, ie, the ideology of the defunct soviets and still the ideology of the chinese, then maybe they'd make more progress. I don't think our government has anything against patriotic, peace loving social democrats trying to change the system from the inside. I think they're more worried about revolutionary leftists who wanna destabilize the government and undermine it to the benefit of the russians and the chinese. So maybe lay off that BS and they'll stop being as much of a target for groups like COINTELPRO and its modern analogues.
Seriously, we can take on the establishment from WITHIN the system. I'm calling for a mass social democratic movement here. Peaceful, above the board, looking to rock the boat enough to accomplish change but not enough to threaten the existence of the current system outright. Basically, leftists need to stop being so...radically left. The revolution isn't gonna come, stop trying to make it. Get out there and support people like Bernie Sanders or AOC or Andrew Yang.
Conclusion
I guess a lot of what I'm saying is that the left needs to dial it back a notch. The problem with the left is most people are going into all this radical crap, and going against the system as a whole, refusing to participate in the process in above the table legitimate ways, and then they wonder why they don't gain ground and get things done. You're losers, man! That's why. Youre too extreme for most americans, youre biting off more than you can chew, you're annoying AF, no one likes you, and you don't get ANYTHING done.
We can probably get somewhere with a good social democratic style political coalition in the US, either within the democrats, or outside it, or both, but we need to drop the far left crap. Like, if you're further left than a 3/7 on my likert scale, you should probably take a chill pill and come back to reality.
I didn't realize when I wrote this it was gonna basically come out that simple, but going through it all, yeah, social democracy and its derivatives = good. Radical leftism = bad. Not saying that we can't learn ANYTHING from leftists, but their tactics, end goals, and ways of getting there (or lack thereof) are offputting at best, and threats to national security at worst. Drop that crap, and engage in smart electoralism, including organizing people like everyone else. Also, drop the identity politics, or at least tone it down. Even if technically compatible with the system as we have it, it's annoying as fudge, divisive, and a complete and utter circlejerk of uselessness. If anything, that stuff is used to divide and conquer us, ensuring that our movements remain inert and useless before they get off the ground. We should ideally avoid it, but at the very least, it needs to go underground like dog whistle politics did under the republicans. Ya know? Not saying we can't try to achieve those goals, but read the room and stop being so loud, annoying, and obnoxious. You turn us into a joke. K thx bi.
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