chapotraphouse

You miss one important thing. Material conditions will continue to get worse. We are past the point where we can have another Obama pretending everything is just fine while the vast majority can't afford shit. It's not 2008 anymore, they can't pretend the economic shit will get better because people already have 16 years of the opposite.

The damage is done, there is no recovery for them. They will win this election, but people will still be poor and angry, the US economy will still be crumbing and China will continue to improve. Something will have to give.

Let go of left-electoralism, comrade.

Hate to say it, but the DNC won a firm generational victory

lmao trump was shot in the fucking head on live tv and everyone forgot about it in a week

every time anything sort of happens we all decide [x faction] has won the country for another generation and then within a matter of days another thing sort of happens

They got this shit locked for at least eight years

Lets not underestimate the Democrats unparalleled skill at snatching defeat from the jaws of 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.

If it makes you feel better, the American left never recovered from the rug being pulled out from them by the death of FDR and the loss of Henry Wallace in the VP spot.

I think the way in which they defeated Bernie in 2020 when he had a serious(likely) chance of winning is what I'd say is the generational "victory" for them.

Bernie sucks and all but people including the DNC apparently realy believed he was a far bigger threat and he wasn't going to bend the knee. Of course the irony in that is obvious, the jokes write themselves etc. Despite all his sucking he was campaigning on far better platform than the alternative, it was no 99 vs 100% Hitler contest like these days.

IMO you shouldn't have any hopes to begin with. Embrace doomerism, the end of the American empire will come through the headlines of 2.0 C of global warming. We all lost a long time ago anyway.

Will they better or worsen material conditions? Our organising capacity is tied to the system failing and liberals are incapable of addressing systemic failure. Even if Walz attempts to bring his Minnesota reforms to the federal level, the Supreme Court will nix them and the liberals will side with the institution over their own bills. The most unpopular 2020 primary candidate will fall apart just as Biden did when we called it. Liberals in 2028 will be feeling as electorally deflated as they were in 2024.

The democrats will always be bad which is where I break with DSA. There's no salvaging that party or operating within it or pulling the democrats to the left. Liberals are now just more honest about their politics.

the DNC won a firm generational victory

Maybe a month ago a bunch of people here were saying Trump was a guaranteed winner in November. Let's slow down.

The brunch crowd can think whatever smug, self-satisfied thoughts they want, it won't make conditions deteriorate any less quickly

Lol, sorry but I find it funny we were all "meh" over Trump winning but Harris is making us doom.

Nobody has won anything here, the left would be in just as shit of a position of Trump wins, or Biden has won.

Hate to say it, but the DNC won a firm generational victory

I think you're forgetting the fact that people's lives will continue to get worse. There's not going to be any advantage to being an incumbent. No president is going to be able to say that's peoole are better off now than four years ago and be believed by normal people. Blue and Red MAGA cults will be the only ones saying how good things are when their person is in office.

The only series of events that can undermine this new DNC paradigm is Israel blowing up the world

Nah, It won't be too long now, the Bernie campaign was itself part of something larger. The Dems are plugging the dam with their fingers.

If the DNC et al had anything left to offer the people they'd be doing it already. The caps are in feeding frenzy mode and the Dems are holding the net but they won't throw it in cuz there's a dude standing in front tossin chum in the water.

There won't be a New Deal, just a new Threat. I wonder what Dem voter turnout will be after 8 more years of that brutality?

I don't think you're wrong in saying the DNC has a firm grip on the near future, my minor point(cope?) is these accelerationist capitalists are driving the DNC and their paradigm right off a cliff. What their destruction heralds iunno but i think things will definitely look different in a decade, and i guess in the end the change I'm hoping for and believe in is that more people see, far more people will know that real change won't happen at the polls.

Simple: I'm not voting for zionist cops, they can all suckstart a chainsaw; death to the settlers, infinite 9/11s upon Amerika.

I understand the feeling however I must offer an anecdote.

I was out to dinner with 3 politically disengaged friends. They were scared of project 2025, trump is hitler, gotta vote blue to save democracy etc. one was even a shooter for Israel (but not the bad stuff they’re doing) because her grandpa was Jewish or something.

Despite them being smart enough to recognize that in our solid blue state my vote didn’t matter, I was still knee jerk criticized for being a “trump voter” after pointing out the dems won’t change anything for abortion rights and Palestine.

All of this is to say I had to calm myself down because I care about my friends while also wrestling with the realization that ppl who aren’t touching the computer/phone in order to grasp a clearer picture of current events are in exactly the same place as 2016.

Calling 8 years a "generational" victory is an overreach. Obama lead to Trump, what new and exciting thing will Harris lead us to?

"competent American fascism"

This was what the Biden-Harris ticket was touted as and, well, the competence is severely lacking.

Serious question who is Tim Walz and why he's all over my feed in grad.

They will not solve the underlying issue of material conditions continuing to crumble

idk if I'd go that far, but even the left libs over in €Urope are squealing over this, very happy to keep running their "parties" like social clubs that never fall out of line with liberal consensus or just drop pretensions and retreat into private philistinism of treats and petty power plays over useless soccdem parties

Yeah they definitely papered over the cracks with this choice. But that brings me to my favorite word, contradictions. The contradictions in the system can only be hidden for so long and even a thoroughly brainwashed populace (Americans) will not be able to ignore them. The thing is will that lead to people recognizing that global socialism is long overdue and an existential need or will it go blue maga and trueanon. So far it seems like the latter. But even blue maga and trueanon will collapse under their own contradictions. Unless we as a species arrive at socialism this braindead cycle will keep repeating and elites will keep scrambling in different ways to maintain their privilege.

Baseless doomerism imo

last holdouts of the post-2016 nascent left movement

I can see why you’d view it that way what with Bush and Bowman’s losses, but one losing season in one electoral arena doesn’t mean that people will go back to being fine with $50k surgeries. This wasn’t on the level of, say, the coordinated Nixon era COINTELPRO campaigns that snuffed out the New Left. There’s still a lot of local and state-level DSA wins, and the orgs that didn’t burn themselves out after the initial post-bernie/covid/blm surge in activity are as strong as ever afaik

The propaganda blitz really is something. I would like to see how things stand once the honeymoon phase is over. This and the Republicans outing themselves as lizardpeople donning human skin over the last few weeks definitely have shifted the momentum.

My mastodon timeline is pretty anti-American but there is still plenty Walz worshipping is sneaking in. Right now I don't have the bandwidth to learn why a new cracker career politician is a shitstain so I will just ignore this for a couple of week or maybe more.

If a governor is doing good things it's just so they can run for president and do bad things, iron clad rule

I'm leaning towards, "its gonna be a close race."

I'm also interested to see what happens if Trump loses. Will the "Trump for Emperor" people give up on voting for Repubs for a few Presidential cycles and the depressed turnout means Dems start taking seats down ballot and turning some Red States into Purple States? Will Trump decide to stop running for President or will he keep running until the Republican party finds a way to keep him out of their Primary and Trump running as an Independent (for that sweet sweet campaign grift money)? Will Dem voters immediately go to sleep if Kamala wins and forget to vote down ballot in the mid terms, keeping the weak Democratic Executive going? When the Republicans run a non-Trump candidate for president, will Dem voters fail to turn out to the polls, returning is to the "normal" of a Dem Pres to Repub Pres to a Dem Pres ... cycle?

My Magic 8 ball has been very unhelpful in answering these questions.