While liberals have held their tongues as Kamala Harris tacked to the center, they're preparing for a major battle over the future of the party, with personnel emerging as a flashpoint.
Progressives need to start finding a primary challenger for 2028 as soon as the polls close. Democrats will feel no leftward pressure otherwise and we’ll be unprepared if we wait.
We were frankly cheated out of a primary this year. The last primary without a preordained winner was 2008. We cannot let this become any more normal than it already has.
A democratic socialist is very different from what most people think of when they hear communist.
Also I’m very left leaning but still like some aspects of capitalism. It just needs to be regulated or else monopolies eat everything and turn capitalism into feudalism.
In the US, there are still a lot from McCarthy-era sentiment and “Communist” is a pejorative within the general population. For instance, The Communist Control Act of 1954 is still on the books. Though it has issues as a law for being really vague, and hasn’t been used seriously against leftist organizing on account of that, it nonetheless remains and has never been outright challenged to the Supreme Court of the United States. Either way, it had a chilling effect, and was pretty successful as part of the US’s broader campaign to demonize communism and communist organizing.
Because of the way “Communism” and “Marxism” are used within US press and mainstream politics (especially by the Republican party), the average voter is conditioned to view them as bad words accordingly. The Democratic party, trying to court “moderate” voters within the political landscape here, all but refuses to touch those words with a 10-foot pole. It’s not part of their brand (and not part of their policy either, not by any stretch of the imagination).
Progressivism in my view is an umbrella term, but still pretty linked with liberalism as a movement in the sense that it’s mostly reformist, and acts a subgroup within the Democratic party. Most “Progressive” candidates for US political office are SocDems at most.
You can call it newspeak, but political movements arise under new/different names as the situation dictates, and often refer to different things. I’d argue that the point of newspeak within 1984 was actually to limit the evolution of language and restrict the development of new words/ideas, but I do get where you’re coming from on account of “progressive” being considered more politically correct.
Progressives need to start finding a primary challenger for 2028 as soon as the polls close. Democrats will feel no leftward pressure otherwise and we’ll be unprepared if we wait.
We were frankly cheated out of a primary this year. The last primary without a preordained winner was 2008. We cannot let this become any more normal than it already has.
When are you guys going to start calling yourselves Marxists/Communists, instead of hiding behind some newspeak label?
Because different folks define those differently.
A democratic socialist is very different from what most people think of when they hear communist.
Also I’m very left leaning but still like some aspects of capitalism. It just needs to be regulated or else monopolies eat everything and turn capitalism into feudalism.
In the US, there are still a lot from McCarthy-era sentiment and “Communist” is a pejorative within the general population. For instance, The Communist Control Act of 1954 is still on the books. Though it has issues as a law for being really vague, and hasn’t been used seriously against leftist organizing on account of that, it nonetheless remains and has never been outright challenged to the Supreme Court of the United States. Either way, it had a chilling effect, and was pretty successful as part of the US’s broader campaign to demonize communism and communist organizing.
Because of the way “Communism” and “Marxism” are used within US press and mainstream politics (especially by the Republican party), the average voter is conditioned to view them as bad words accordingly. The Democratic party, trying to court “moderate” voters within the political landscape here, all but refuses to touch those words with a 10-foot pole. It’s not part of their brand (and not part of their policy either, not by any stretch of the imagination).
Progressivism in my view is an umbrella term, but still pretty linked with liberalism as a movement in the sense that it’s mostly reformist, and acts a subgroup within the Democratic party. Most “Progressive” candidates for US political office are SocDems at most.
You can call it newspeak, but political movements arise under new/different names as the situation dictates, and often refer to different things. I’d argue that the point of newspeak within 1984 was actually to limit the evolution of language and restrict the development of new words/ideas, but I do get where you’re coming from on account of “progressive” being considered more politically correct.