This is no honeymoon, the American "left" will never recover from the Harris/Walz combo; every major base of support (demographic/economic) is covered; Black woman with a jovial heartlandish white man standing behind her is the universal password for the legendary "competent American fascism" software update leftists have been prophesying.
They got this shit locked for at least eight years, Walz is suburbanite catnip and Harris has the identity libs eating out her hands, along with big tech, wallstreet, and the zionist lobby who are now methodically eliminating the last holdouts of the post-2016 nascent left movement
There is no credible avenue of leverage here, the libs can effectively respond to any leftist utterance with accusations of racism, misogyny, and purity testing and it will stick. Already we have most liberals being one rhetorical step away from defending Walz unleashing the National Guard on BLM protesters
There is no point in engaging with domestic national politics at this current time, the ball is firmly overseas
The only series of events that can undermine this new DNC paradigm is Israel blowing up the world and the US mobilizing to save it. Not even the collapse of Ukraine can dent it now, since that was "Biden's project"
Hate to say it, but the DNC won a firm generational victory
I'm not sure anyone who is exiting here was really "radicalized" to begin with. Yes, it'll tone down the online rhetoric of some Twitter personalities, but they were always just looking for an excuse to bury their heads deeper in the sand. The people who are really out there doing the work aren't suddenly going to stop organizing and feeding people because a couple of somewhat likeable Democrats got nominated (or elected). When the novelty wears off and everything turns out to be more of the same--austerity politics, forever wars, out of control warming, and no meaningful social reforms--we'll be right back in the same place. The people who are ecstatic about going back to brunch weren't fellow travelers in the first place, and anyone who really was flirting with genuine leftism will quickly be disillusioned. The problem isn't the dismantling of the American left, but rather that there wasn't anything to meaningfully dismantle in the first place. The struggle continues.
I don't know, if they try doing Minnesota-style social democracy on the national level, it will be like giving a small glass of water to someone lost in the desert. People are still going to die of thirst, but they'll die loyal to the party that gave them the sip
I don’t foresee them actually giving them a glass of water though. They’ll give a lot of speeches about how they’ll give you a glass of water, how cool and icey it’s gonna be, but then, wouldn’t you know it, Joe Mansion or the Parmigiantarian said we can’t.
That's a huge if. I agree that if we get some non-trivial SocDem reforms, that might change things. I don't see that happening, though: Walz did a decent job with that kind of thing as governor in a couple of places at least (and at least does seem to give a shit about the working class), but he's not the Presidential candidate. Plus, the whole rest of the national political machine is very solidly against making any concessions to the working class. I don't see Kamala spending all her political capital trying to make that happen, even if she does win. She's given no signal that that would be a priority--quite the opposite, in fact.
I think they'll use the selection of Walz as a cudgel against the left for quite a while (i.e. "we picked the guy you and Bernie wanted, so shut up and fall in line! You can't control everything here!").
We'll see. They've done it before, pre-neoliberalism. It's just such an obvious, intelligent move for the ruling class to make (if they are interested in that sort of thing)
It would really rile up the fascists though
We will indeed. I agree that it would probably cement their prominence in national politics for a generation if they did it, but that's been true for a long time and they've acted like it would be the worst idea ever. Even just the modest reforms that Walz did in his state--free school lunch, guaranteed vacation and parental leave, legalizing cannabis, protection of abortion rights, and some pro-LGBT legislation--would probably lock down the millennial and zoomer vote for them forever. I'll be shocked if they do it, but they've made a few pretty surprising decisions in a row lately.