One interesting quote that stood out to me:
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), asked if he thinks Ocasio-Cortez will make it into leadership in the near term, told Axios: “Yes.”
At this point, why not just say “fuck it, new party”? Honestly, I really do think there needs to be a full and clean break from the DNC establishment.
It’s called “the spoiler effect” and it’s detrimental to everyone in a 2 party system. Gotta change the system for that to work. It helps the opposing party, who are often happy to donate to that effort for that reason.
I think the optics of “we did everything we could” will be important, if it comes to that.
Yeah, that’s fair. If Pelosi continues pulling out all the stops to keep the old guard in power in the next session of Congress, I’d be willing to bet that’s when the new party will actually get founded.
I think the only plausible scenario that would draw away enough voters for the party to actually get replaced would be for a social democrat or progressive to win the presidential primary but the party leadership takes it away with convention or superdelegate shenanigans. If AOC runs, it might happen.
They should just tea party the DNC. No need to start a new party, just take over the existing one.
We have dozens of new parties already. The problem is that none of them have the roughly 80 million voters necessary to win the general election, or the corresponding numbers to win a significant number of local and state elections. When, realistically, the single biggest issue is battling the slide into fascism, you need the numbers to stand up against the fascist party.
The DNC historically has the numbers, the marketing, and the resources to be contenders in that fight. Their platform is broad and vague enough to approximately appeal to a wide number of voters, both progressive and neoliberal. Displacing them in the minds of anti-fascist voters is a gamble, and requires a party with a similarly broad appeal, and the resources and track record to inspire confidence. These are factors that every existing third party lacks, and I see no reason why a brand new party could be expected to outperform them.
The only way I see it working would be a long, gradual promotion of progressives who caucus with Democrats, eventually displacing enough representatives to pressure Democrats into caucusing with them. But that’s a long process that would require an incredible amount of grassroots campaign support, both in terms of money and platform amplification.
It’s not impossible, but it’s an uphill battle and it’s useless to pretend it can happen in a single election cycle.
If half of the Democratic caucus went “fuck this, new party”, that would create the critical mass to get something new off the ground, I think.
Perhaps. Keep in mind that’s assuming you could get half of the Democratic caucus to rally behind the same new party. Splintering is counterproductive. Additionally, that’s only enough to get an effort off the ground. Current Democratic and Republican votes are roughly equal, neither the remaining half of the Democratic party, nor the half that forms a new party, will have the numbers to keep Republicans in check. You’d have to grow this new party quickly, including peeling off Republican voters. This is not a trivial task.
The problem is that the people who can get votes are the ones who would break away, but the people who control the money are the ones who would stay. You need both to get anyone elected.
Splitting the party would be a hail mary; you’d be betting that you could make enough in small-dollar donations from individuals to run successful campaigns and get people into office. And if you were wrong, you’d be leaving the second-most-powerful party in the country in the hands of people like Pelosi, Clinton, and Manchin–and burning the bridge behind you.
It’s not an impossible idea. In fact, it’s happened before (remember the Whigs?). But it’s a really tough road. I get why they’re leaving it as the last choice.
Implement ranked-choice voting as a start.
The fact our voting system kind of forces people to coalesce into two parties is causing friction in both at this point. You’ve got Pelosi’s old guard Dems infighting with the younger Progressives, and on the other side of the aisle there’s the MAGAs trying to force anyone unwilling to toe Herr Trump’s line out of the GOP.
