I mean, I've been kinda having this thought today with the whole Jamaal Bowman thing, but why is the left so bad at politics? it baffles me.
I know, I know, we can say the DNC screws us, big money screws us, it's true to some extent. But no. The left just seems uniquely bad at just doing anything political. The other parts of the spectrum ORGANIZE. They do get out the vote efforts. AIPAC just got tons of jewish voters out in NY16. Why can't we organize around a handful of issues and get people out to vote? Why can't we be a bloc of voters like the religious right is which is obsessed with abortion or gay marriage? Or the tea party obsessed with national debt. No, it's not just money. It's the fact that we don't seem to have our crap together.
Like this election. We couldnt get organized around a single candidate. We didn't organize around williamson. More people voted for cease fire now than marianne williamson. It was a joke. She wasn't even on the ballot in my state. I had to write her in. Even dean phillips got on the ballot here.
Normally, you got these groups, like say, Moms Against Drunk Driving, who get really hyper focused on some issues, and manage to do political hardball to change things. Those guys are why the drinking age is 21. They basically leveraged things to ensure it was 21 and got any states punished for NOT making it 21 by withholding highway funds from them federally. We had the prohibition party eventually make prohibition a literal constitutional amendment once. How come we arent organizing for medicare for all? Or a green new deal? (since I know that that's more popular than my UBI idea). Most of these groups get out the vote for candidates who do what they want, and tank candidates who don't. But we just end up not playing hardball and falling for the "blue no matter who" stuff, and we end up just not even doing anything.
Part of it is communists are just losers. I'm not a communist but I've kinda seen that a lot of people who end up being progressives end up becoming "leftists" over time, and a lot of those guys are anti electoral. They give up on the system, and larp as revolutionaries, which is how we get stupidity like the free palestine crap in the first place. They have to be offputting and alienating since it's the only way they think people will listen to them.
Then you got leftists like in the anti work community who read theory from 150 years ago, but then ban anyone who actually proposes realistic solutions like UBI. Still kinda bitter at fricking r/antiwork for that one. Leftists seem to ruin everything honestly.
I mean, someone said it today, the message should be simple, "you're being ####ed, we want to help you". It should be an easy winning message.
And the thing is, we've done this before. We've organized during the new deal. We got the 40 hour work week, FLSA, social security, etc. We had people like huey long going on about sharing the wealth. I do admit the government did eventually infiltrate that stuff and break it up starting in the 1950s, cracking down on literal communists, because again, literal communists are at best losers and at worst national security risks. They kinda bring it on themselves by wanting to fricking overturn the system rather than just reforming it. And when your existential enemy after WWII is the communists, yeah, identifying with those guys is kinda a bad thing.
But that doesnt mean there isnt tons of room to be like...a social democrat or social liberal or social libertarian. Ya know, some sort of reformist. Again, why is it so fricking hard?
Ive noticed this since 2016 itself. Someone said Bernie must be livid. He pushed to start a political revolution and now those who came after him are already getting wrecked over the free palestine crap. And I'm gonna be honest. I'm kinda pissed, as someone who was with bernie in 2016 and 2020, I'm really kinda scared for the left's future post bernie. We dont have anyone else. The movement is going insane, and they're already starting to make all of the mistakes previous waves of the left made.
I really do think part of the mistake is the nature of leftism. It's like those who are more moderate are being absorbed back into the democrats for better or for worse. I've resisted doing this, but even I'm having to do it this time, and given how radical "the left" that hasn't is getting, it's like I'm forced to choose between the neoliberals that I hate and these whacko communist types who fricking act like doomers and never do anything productive and seem to jsut make the situation worse because they have the energy of incels and nice guys. Like that's basically what leftists are. They're the political equivalent of incels. They've given up on themselves, they've given up on society, they're bitter, and their bitterness and crappy attitude toward everything makes everyone hate them and makes the situation worse. Which just confirms their presuppositions on the subject to begin with.
Idk, maybe it's the fact that I came from the right originally, but I do think the left should be able to get somewhere if they wanted to. They'd have to drop the "incel crap" type stuff (like literal communism), but they could probably organize and get some stuff going. The unions did it in the early 20th century. Why can't we get something like that going again on a political level? I'm not saying it's gonna be easy. There is generally tons of opposition to left wing movements. We dont have the money and resources, and there is that whole history of mccarthyism, cointelpro, etc (although tbqh, i think that simply avoiding LITERAL COMMUNISM would probably help a lot), but still. We have some play I think.
For a while I've been saying we need a tea party of the left. I did this recognizing that the organization the tea party engaged in worked. Now, I'm not sure about that because ive kinda realized the modern left is batcrap insane like the tea party is, but we still need something tea party LIKE. We need an organization based around a set of principles and who just keeps fighting for these changes and hammering away. Who acquires voters, does get out the vote efforts, shifts elections, and sends a message to the dems that they can't win without their help. That's how we win politics. We need to play it the way everyone else plays it, from the right, to the center to aipac. It's only the left that seems completely inept at this and it baffles me why. It's not just the matter of the opposition crushing them. The left literally has a competence problem.
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