The far left wages an internal fight: Help Democrats or reject the establishment?

[LetMyPeopleVote]

My big issue is that I am convinced that if TFG wins in 2024, we can kiss our Democratic form of government goodbye. To me, this issue overrides other policy issues. We saw what happened in 2016 when Jill Stein helped TFG get elected. These types of fights could help TFG defeat Joe Biden and end our democratic form of government,

Link to tweet

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/left-democratic-socialists-rcna103066

A progressive organizer backed by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has a good shot at winning a congressional special election in Rhode Island on Tuesday — and some on the left are not happy about it.

The local chapter of Democratic Socialists of America issued an unusual anti-endorsement of former state Rep. Aaron Regunberg, urging supporters to “reject ‘progressives’ at the polls,” saying Thursday it was “disappointed in AOC and Bernie but not surprised” after the New York congresswoman endorsed Regunberg and the Vermont senator held a rally for him.

The Rhode Island chapter is unusually aggressive, but the local split reflects a larger divide among Democratic Socialists of America and other far-left groups as they debate their forced marriage with the Democratic Party several years after a surge in membership spurred by Sanders’ presidential campaigns made socialism politically relevant in America for the first time in decades.

“DSA was reborn after the first Bernie campaign, and the state of socialist politics can feel stuck or even declining considering we were thinking about a socialist becoming president of the United States,” said Micah Uetricht, a DSA member and editor of the socialist magazine Jacobin, who co-wrote the book “Bigger Than Bernie: How We Can Win Democratic Socialism in Our Time.”.....

“What changed in 2017,” after the Bernie bump and Trump’s election, “was that DSA members began running for office as open socialists and winning high-profile races,” said Daniel Crowell, spokesperson for the Rhode Island DSA. He added that while it was exciting to finally be running, “after a couple years, some DSA members were disappointed by the performance of DSA-endorsed politicians. It often seemed like they were joining the Democratic establishment rather than seriously challenging Democratic Party leaders.”

[LiberaBlueDem]

1. There are good socialists and bad socialists

The bad want to burn it all down as if they were puppets of Russia

The good want to improve the system.

The biggest obstacle to progress is republicans. Good socialists save their venom for pubs while hoping like hell women never vote for any republican.

[Alexander Of Assyria]

2. Far left socialists?? In Canada 🍁 that's the current excellent government!

American just regular left progressives need a political education internment camp run by Canucks! 🇨🇦… Will graduate full far left!

[Hekate]

7. Only people born yesterday think this will help under current US circs. We were betrayed by Nader...

… and the Green Party repeatedly.

After Gore was defeated by the desire of just enough idiots to “make a protest vote” — how did that work out under BushCheney? And when the same thing happened with Hillary while others on the Left who wanted to “make a strong statement” — how did that work out with Trump?

You said above: American just regular left progressives need a political education internment camp run by Canucks! 🇨🇦… Will graduate full far left!

Sorry, but this is utter bullshit. Canada has its own severe problems. We, on the other hand, need to work out our own problems using the system we have.

One more fiasco like Hillary Clinton’s loss to Trump (despite winning the popular vote by 3 million) and we can kiss what’s left of our democracy goodbye.

Bernie Sanders, in case you missed it, just put out out a strong message to the Left to get behind Joe Biden’s re-election with everything they’ve got.

[Cha]

3. Well I'm rooting for those who

Understand we are in another Fight For the Life of Our Democracy.

All Hands On Deck.. Not a time to FAFO.

[Hortensis]

4. Sounds like these anti-Democratic groups have been losing a few

to the Democratic Party for once, instead of vice versa. Temporarily "helping," presumably. Good for good sense.

On the other, more extreme side, discouragement and anger as the strategy to take over the Democratic Party from "inside" strategy's failed big time, leading to increased interest in overthrow from the outside.

They have another problem, though, a BIG one that's ours also: some of the alt-left leaners they were successfully wooing are continuing their migration on beyond them to mingle their LW notions with the far right, where they're all discovering the virtue and good sense of wannabes wooing both sides, including names we recognize like Ramasmarmy, West, RFKJ, others brought along by the likes of Steven Bannon and his ilk.

Unfortunately, for some, the migration to LW extremism and from that to RW extremism is also a "natural" progression down that rabbit hole.

Hopefully, the decision of many will be the one Bernie Sanders made. His revolution has to wait while he puts down the fascists.

[betsuni]

8. +1

[haele]

14. American Politics was once described as a horseshoe.

The top of the shoe, the curve, is the moderate middle. It is neither wholly left or right.
The bottom part was the radicals; and they're so close together, they've become mirror images.
It's easy for radicals to see a similar cause with each other there at the bottom of the horseshoe, and there's far less difference between them to meet than there is with the moderates at the top of the shoe.

Haele

[The Magistrate]

5. The Left Auxiliary Of the Christo-Fascist Right, Sir, Never Fails To Disappoint....

[Elessar Zappa]

6. Most of the far left did the right thing in 2020.

Let’s hope they don’t fail us in ‘24.

[DFW]

12. Only after seeing the effect of not doing so in 2016

I think 2020 was more for self-preservation than seeing the light of any sort.

[Elessar Zappa]

15. Whatever the reason, as long as they vote Biden.

[DFW]

17. In the primary as well. Our primary should be a mere a formality so that we have a huge contrast

Let's have 12 months of Republicans snipping at each other's heels:
"He can't possibly beat Biden!" "She can't possibly beat Biden!" And have them ALL be right!

It's time for a prime time gala display of "Republicans in Disarray."

[Elessar Zappa]

18. Yup.

I’m sure Biden will breeze through the primaries but idiots like RFK Jr. are trying to poison the well (it won’t work).

[DFW]

19. Bobby should have stuck to teaching environmental law at Pace

I have lost all contact with him, but were I to suddenly have him on the phone again (it has been close to 15 years now), I'd ask him the same thing Franz Zappa asked Suzy Creamcheese so many decades ago: "What's got into ya?"

[Hekate]

21. LOL. My late brother used to quote the Suzy Creamcheese lines back in the day...

“Suzy. Suzy Creamcheese. This is the voice of your conscience speaking.”
Still makes me laugh to remember it.

As for RFK Jr — that is indeed a sad story.

[edisdead]

9. you just can't help stupid

I am sorry but these groups have fucked over our country by pulling votes time and time again.

Stop falling for astroturf BS.

[betsuni]

10. "It often seemed like they were joining the Democratic establishment rather than seriously

challenging Democratic Party leaders."

This is what I don't understand. What do they expect? For them not to do the actual job for their constituents as Democrats but continue to be anti-Democratic activists responsible only to the DSA and PACs like Justice Democrats and their national supporters? This puts their politicians in a difficult position. Why the obsession with the "establishment" and leadership? Are they Peter Pan or something?

[Oopsie Daisy]

11. I've noticed this also, and wondered the same thing.

What greater good is accomplished by NOT serving their constituents? Do they exist only for fundraising purposes, showboating purposes, TV talk shows and sabotaging the Biden agenda with an "all or nothing" pie in the sky approach to everything?

[DFW]

13. In American politics

All or nothing usually ends in "nothing."

[Oopsie Daisy]

16. True! No compromise! It seems that they're not happy until everyone is not happy.

>> All or nothing usually ends in "nothing."
Yes! Someone with a glimmer of understanding. Indeed, in the world of American politics, the "all or nothing" approach often leads to... drumroll, please... nothing! It's like a never-ending cycle of disappointment and frustration. But hey, who needs progress and compromise when you can just stick to your stubborn ideals and achieve absolutely nothing?

But they'll never listen. They'll continue banging their head against that brick wall of extremism. Some little internal voice they hear keeps telling them that it's bound to work out splendidly.

[betsuni]

20. Like voting against the infrastructure bill because Biden promised all the lead pipes

will be fixed and every child will have clean drinking water but some pipes can be fixed but not all and your constituents will be so disappointed by the broken promise that they won't vote anymore. You had to protect them, sometime way in the future, from finding out that Biden did not literally fix every lead pipe in America. It would break their hearts.

All or nothing!

[LetMyPeopleVote]

22. Gabe Amo, a former Biden administration official, has won the #RI01 congressional primary.

This makes me smile. I like this candidate compared to the candidate supported by the Justice Democrats

Link to tweet

[betsuni]

23. Good!

[Hortensis]

24. Great news! Of course, this OP's far-left infighting must be a factor,

though Mr. Amo's victory continues a strong national pattern of voters choosing liberal Democrats who run positive, DOABLE, goal-oriented campaigns.

But, there were the ongoing hostilities between the DSAs and WFPs, who turned on Regunberg and Bernie Sanders, AOC, et al, for what they saw as "compromise endorsement" ("compromise" always means BETRAYAL of course) and attacked Regunberg himself as a wealthy candidate who took SuperPAC money. Regunberg meanwhile had been purity campaigning against others for doing that...

And of course, add in that the failing Justice Democrats, who've been encountering severe difficulties in taking over the Democratic Party , were unable to flood the district with outside special interest (theirs) money.

Congratulations, Gabe Amo! On to wrap this up in the GE.

[betsuni]

25. +1

[LetMyPeopleVote]

27. I am still glad the better candidate won

[hunter]

26. I'm a hard core leftist, more so than most here on DU, and I'm a radical environmentalist too.

My support of the Democratic Party is even harder core than that because the alternatives are always worse.

Joe Biden is a Great President, one of the greater of U.S.A history.

Life is complicated.