Bernie is the only leftist in the Senate. So until that changes it will be impossible to move beyond him.
this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2025
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The sit out centrists need to vote
A new party is needed. Be done with the garbage that we currently have
Centrists need to stop telling leftists what to do and what is good for them or they're going to keep on losing elections.
Bernie is the left's most effective advocate in the US and we need more of him.
We need more like him
Yeah, but also I think a Godzilla sized Bernie Sanders could do a lot of good.
This article is not what we need right now.
No, the left needs to study Bernie and take notes. Then elect politicians exactly like him.
this is basically saying, we are currently at -10, Sanders is at +3 and we need to jump to +10 right away. Not gonna happen unless through civil war.
Republicans were at -3 pre 2016 and they've ratcheting up to -10 pretty quickly. If you have a good charismatic leader that the base falls for you can drag the rest of the party along to the edges of the Overton window pretty quickly.
there wont be anyone like sanders or aoc,, and all other imitation dems turn out to be shills for the gop.
i.e. Fetterman.
When the party supported him instead of pulling funding, it should have been clear that he was lying about being a progressive.
there isn't, but there can be
No.
The Left needs to get rid of fucking Schumer.
Let Bernie retire, because the man was there for the signing of the declaration (pretty sure his signature is just below Adams's.)
Let the man retire. Get rido f the Quaislings that seem content to be ineffectual opposition.
Do stuff other than beg the base for money and give people somethign they can be involved in. Start looking at community efforts. Build ties at the base's own level so the base SEES the Democratic party Doing stuff locally that HELPS them.
I mean, that's basically what the article is saying, too. Just a lot more detailed, with a lot more research and evidence to support their assertion.
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I believe the left needs to start listening to Sanders. This man is a genuine champion. He, for decades, has been shunned by his colleagues, and yet he has never wavered in continuing to fight for all of us. I wish I had a fraction of the courage this man has.
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Sanders is the american Jeremy corbyn and if it looks as though he might get near to power, the establishment will take him out, smear him and try to remove him from politics and the democratic party, just as they did corbyn.
They used the excuse of antisemitism in the labour party, which was total lies, he's the most stalwart anti-racist in UK politics and has been for decades. His record speaks for itself. He's still barred from the labour party now.
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we can't get more than what sanders wants if we can't even get what sanders wants
Surprisingly, It's sometimes easier to do big things.
For example: Do social security instead of tinkering around the edges of the existing retirement system.
Yep, article is well meaning but dumb.
Idealism is great, but politics requires pragmatism. Which is why people like AOC and Bernie (who are well left of Kamala politically) still told voters to vote for Kamala in the election - she was the only way to avoid Trump, she was the pragmatic choice.
But apparently we'll be discussing why it's a dumb idea to be a protest voter in a very close election for the next four years non-stop.
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Sanders works with democrats while voters paint democrats as evil. If you love Bernie then ask yourself why does he keep such company? Vilifying the dem party ain’t helping and your Bernie recognized that a long time ago. What are you accomplishing ?
Something needs to change either people pull their head out of their ass and cut this shit out, or they get better at shit and stop it. But wtf
Move left and we'll quit correctly pointing out that your party is shit on purpose.
One of Bernie's biggest flaws is that he's working with the Democrats.
Bernie should be running "here's how to run for office in your area" drives on his oligarchy tour. The only way progressives will kick out corporate democrats is by the common person running more. Bernie should be pushing more people to run instead of just getting up on a stage in front of people and being a politician. He's not a good organizer. Great talker. Horrible at getting people out to vote. Dude couldn't even get enough people out to vote in the Democrat primary in 2016 to defeat Clinton. She beat him by a larger voting margin than Trump won by last year.
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I agree with a lot of this article, but it doesn't really acknowledge the reality of the Democratic leadership's obstruction. The party is, generously, a slightly left-of-center organization that prioritizes stifling their own left wing over defeating their far-right opponents. They've successfully held off two of Bernie's presidential runs, redistricted Bowman out of his seat, and Pelosi has spent so much time and effort undermining the squad (and AOC personally) that it borders on pathological.
I agree with a lot of the criticisms of Bernie in this article, and beyond that, he's just too old to be in the Senate, much less the standard bearer for the entire left, but the Democrats have spent decades making sure there's no viable alternative. We need to move past Bernie, but we need to build an actual progressive movement that can get past Democratic obstruction to do that, and for now, Bernie is still the de facto leader of that movement.
They're center right at best, they dont advocate for workers solidarity and actively distract workers from unity. They demand compromise with capitalists yet give the workers nothing. They are only left wing in social policy, on economics and governance they are fascism lite.
Even on social policy they have to be coaxed into it by a large activist movement and they'll ditch it if the Republicans make too big a stink
Well, there's a reason I said, "generously," slightly left-of-center. It also depends on the Democrat. There's enough of them that care about labor to get the PRO Act through the house, but not the Senate. I don't think it would be unfair to call someone like Gary Peters center-left, given his strong pro-union track record, but someone like Schumer or Pelosi, who are squarely on the side of Wall Street and big tech respectively, are just conservatives masquerading as left-leaning centrists.
Imo being left wing should at the absolute bare minimum require supporting the abolition of private property and ownership. Unions are fundamentally a compromise between labor and capital, therefore supporting unions is more centrist. An example of a left wing position would be supporting revolutionary workers syndicates.
I mean, fair enough, but there's no point in America history where abolishing private ownership wouldn't be considered far-left. I understand that compared to international standards or across the broader spectrum of political theory, the American left has never been particularly left-wing. When I say the Democrats are slightly center-left or center-right, I'm comparing them to themselves 30 to 40 years ago. Since 1980, they've slowly compromised their principles to the point where they can't be considered, "left," by any modern political metric.
If you asked a Appalachian coal miner in 1921 they would say that the abolition of private property is the absolute basic nessesity for any leftist movement
...OK, that still would have a far-left opinion in American politics. It's not like the country was divided between socialists and communists back then. Hell, it took the Great Depression just to get the moderate socialist reforms of the New Deal passed, and even then, its opponents thought it was communism.
Like, I don't know what to tell you. I understand your point; you think anything that doesn’t involve the abolition of private property isn't left-wing. But even pre-Cold War, even pre-McCarthyism, even during the Coal Wars, that position would be the far-left of American politics. I'm not trying to be a dick here, but when I, or the author of the article, or most Americans, are talking about, "the left," we're definitely not working from your definition.
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