I’ve seen a depressing trend of Democratic politicians embracing anti trans talking points and compromising gender affirming care for young people. This is extremely concerning as states and the federal government are undermining access to care now more than ever. Democrats standing by trans people has far more dire consequences now than ever, yet we’re being treated as politically disposable by people who used to campaign on lgbtq issues like Gavin Newsom and Pete Buttigieg.
I can’t say I’m surprised. Liberal papers like the New York Times has been uncritically promoting unscientific transphobia for years that claims alternatives exist to gender affirming care. My guess is that people see a person transitioning as an unfortunate thing, desperately wishing there was another way. They ignore the fact that gender affirming care is both the best treatment for dysphoria, and one of the most successful treatments for any mental condition ever discovered.
To put it simply, making gender affirming care harder to obtain for kids will kill many of them. Kids being kept from care by their parents already drives people to suicide, and a slimy politician preventing supportive parents from helping their kids will do the same. Every time I see people claim these guys are our best shot at beating fascism, I die inside. I have no doubt that they’ll eventually axe care for all adults like everyone who was originally “worried about fairness in sports” is currently pushing for. The only way they won’t is if we make it a costly issue for them.
none of us are free until all of us are free.
I agree with that but it won’t be a single victory that gets everyone what we need.
I’ve seen a depressing trend of Democratic politicians embracing anti trans talking points and compromising gender affirming care for young people.
Burn the DNC to the ground, these impotent acts of betrayal of the voting base that fail to meaningfully activate anyone in return are the unmistakable indicators of a terminal disease in the party.
The sooner we do it, the sooner we can start building a real party on the left in the US.
This isn’t redeemable or reformable.
Make a third party that appeals regionally at first than expand nationwide to replace the democrats.
It’s a mathematical certainty that any work on a third party will only help the party that it is most unlike. Seriously, you aren’t the first to think “fuck it, let’s just have a NEW party.” You will spend your days actively harming your interests until you die. And here’s the part where you tell me it needs to get worse before it gets better. No, it doesn’t. It needs to get better incrementally over long time scales and that is the ONLY way anything has ever improved anywhere. Do the work. This nonsense about burning down the world over a single issue is performative crap we don’t have time for.
This is why first-past-the-post needs to be replaced with the single transferable vote. The rules were originally designed by the rich for the rich.
If you believe that’s where your energy is best spent, I wish you success. It’s probably a matter of planting trees whose shade you’ll never sit in, but there are healthy alternatives we can promote.
Starting a third party in a FPTP system? That’s just suicide.
There is another way: run for office as a Democrat and be the change you want to see in the party. What Bernie and AOC did. We need a few dozen more of them, and things will actually start moving.
What the tea party did. What MAGA did. What Mandami is doing.
Changing the existing party is what works. Demolishing it does not.
We can only hope Elon starts his third party he’s threatened a couple times.
The Republican party replaced the Whig party and the Bull Moose party came close.
mamdani is the first of these and the democratic party won’t even endorse him; what makes you think they’ll behave any different for others?
If you haven’t noticed, it doesn’t fucking matter. Mamdani is the candidate and assuming people turn out he will be the mayor.
Because they will see that he wins anyway
They’ll never “endorse” their replacements, nor do they need to.
As others have pointed out here, this kind of takeover of an existing part is exactly what Trump did. You may remember that he did it over the strenuous objections and through stiff resistance of the party.
He did this through his mastery of media, and capturing 30% of the voters in this country with his performance through the process. They eventually realized that Trump was the best card they had to play.
As Bernie and AOC showed, you can muster enough popular support in your home constituency that pushback from the bureaucrats doesn’t matter.
I think the sad news for a lot of people in this thread is that 30% of Americans are not actually onboard with their agenda for a more socialistic America. So while isolated successes may be possible, and help things progress, there simply isn’t going to be a groundswell of support like Trump received. The Democrats are the limp plastic bags of cold soup that they are because the voters themselves are complacent with the status quo and not really willing to roll the dice on it. Sure, plenty are poor enough to almost certainly benefit, but they don’t think of themselves that way. No one’s lower class - everyone’s on their way to joining the “I got mine” club anytime now. And that’s America. This is it I’m afraid. This is who we are.
Starting a third party in a FPTP system? That’s just suicide.
It worked in Canada, India and the UK.
they have Parliamentary systems :/
the US is fucked because the President is enormously powerful and elected directly by the people.
The president is not elected directly by the people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election
“The election of the president and vice president of the United States is an indirect election…”
It took centuries for women to earn the right to vote, so I happily champion decent causes until their full fruition.
That’s the way to think: long arc.
Rosa Parks wasn’t the first person who refused to give up her seat on the bus. There were absolutely other cases that could have been pushed through the courts earlier. But Parks was an ideal figure: clean record, old, harmless little lady. For her story to go down in history, others had to be passed over. It’s what we call picking our battles.
the proper way is to do a hostile takeover of the Democratic party.
Trump wasn’t really a Republican, he was a nationalist (in 2016) and now a fascist (in 2024.) Republicans were neocons, libertarians and classical conservatives.
in 2017 he purged the actual Republicans from the Party, and filled its hollowed husk with MAGA. by 2024, the takeover was complete. actual Republicans (e.g. Liz Cheney, Romney) abandoned ship. the name is the only thing that stayed the same.
so, we need to do the same with the DNC. the formula is simple. hijack the primaries, shove the existing leadership out and show the Republicans what “socialism” really means.
Agreed.
Most of them voluntarily left though
This nonsense about burning down the world over a single issue is performative crap we don’t have time for.
It isn’t a single issue. It simply isn’t. Regardless, telling trans people and their allies online that fighting for their rights is “nonsense” amounting to “performative crap”, seems like transphobia to me.
Look at this guy strategizing like he has multiple fair and free elections left!
Woman* and it’s always worth talking about improving democracy. It’s not like every US election is automatically “rigged” after Trump got a second term. Check Portland’s electoral system.
Trans rights are human rights. What would be the point of opposing fascism if it’s not to uphold human rights?
because it’s worse for business than neoliberalism was. The rich agreed to fascism because they needed to redirect populist sentiment, but the neoliberal model really was optimal for them.
They created a culture war to distract people from the class war they are winning.
Based on a recent video i viewed of tech CEOs practically fellating Trump on camera, I would say business sentiment regarding fascism is mixed, at least.
They wish they didn’t have to kiss the ring, but at least they aren’t seeing harsher regulation from radical communist liberals.
Giving up on trans rights is the definition of losing to fascism.
Fascism is an ideology that’s turtules all the way down. Once you exclude one group you have built the social infrastructure and mechanisms to exclude any other group. The only defense is to accept and include all groups.
This. This is how genocide operates. The number of bystanders gets lower and lower as they are carted off into the camps or turn full blown fascist. It’s always like this. Armenia. Germany. Rwanda. It’s a set script.
RFK has made no secret of wanting to take away meds from mentally ill people and putting them into farming camps.
Mamdani needs to become mayor of New York already to show these clown democrats how to do their jobs.
They are doing their jobs. They aren’t stupid, they just don’t work for us.
And we shouldn’t be voting for anyone who won’t work for us.
The problem is that it can be difficult to tell who that is until they’re already elected. Kind of like how a driving instructor has no idea how the next person in the test car is going to perform until they actually do it.
And then once they’re elected there’s a distinct advantage for incumbents to stay elected, unless they’ve really fucked up somehow.
Republicans managed to do it. They have an entire party perfectly willing to destroy the country for the billionaire oligarchs from the very top all the way down to the town dog catcher.
That’s because the Republican base is a literal cult
You guys don’t get it. We need to concede the civil rights of a marginalized group to defeat fascism!
if the Social Democrats would just concede the Jewish Question, they could have kept the Nazis out of power!
👵🖕
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Your “reasoned” argument to “slow down”, “don’t rock the boat” or “be patient” for social justice would be familiar to Civil Rights activists. MLK suggested that the “white moderate” was a bigger obstacle to civil rights than the white citizens council.
What you’re really saying is that class struggle takes priority over social justice. The big problem with that is that social justice has never came to people who who politely sit at the back of the bus.
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I get it, but conservatism has taken over by ratcheting the country to the right. They’ve been patiently putting people in positions of power from dog catcher up to the presidency for the last forty years.
Progressives aren’t satisfied with ratcheting the country to the left. It’s all or nothing.
The country never moves towards the left or anything closely resembling egalitarianism in any meaningful way. Gay marriage has been one of the few major wins in recent history, but that’s not “ratcheting the country to the left”. You could be the most staunch supporter of capitalism and “free markets” in the world, literally the opposite of egalitarianism, and still support trans and gay rights/be socially liberal.
Progressives aren’t satisfied with ratcheting the country to the left. It’s all or nothing.
The Democrats aren’t satisfied until the country is completely to the right and they aren’t interested in winning elections or seriously fighting MAGA - their focus is firmly on suppressing the left.
Progressives do not hold significant power in elected office or in the DNC. Bernie Sanders had two primaries rigged against him, and David Hogg was recently ousted from his position as Vice Chair of the DNC
for gender diversity reasonsbecause he was pushing progressive primary challengers.Ken Martin also ensured DNC officer neutrality in future primaries this year, in order to neuter David Hogg not long after he committed to funding these challengers (which is likely why David Hogg refused to run for re-election). Democrats only have a problem with rigging primaries when progressives are the ones getting support.
Progressives are unpredictable and difficult to control, may be of the socialist variety, and disincentivize major donors - which the DNC and Democratic party rely on.
“Ending” slavery, suffrage, the New Deal, income tax, * gay rights… They were all steps to the left.
I’m not arguing that the democratic party as it stands is the vehicle to institute a just and fair society. But I did watch the Tea Party subvert and consume the republicans. It can be done to the democratic party as well. It has to be in tandem with regular wins, like how the conservatives did it.
*I can’t believe I left out Roe v Wade
“Ending” slavery
Slavery only increased under neoliberal policy. Where does our lithium come from? Slaves and child slaves. Our cocoa? In part, child slaves. Where do most of our goods come from? Sweat shops and exploited third-world countries. Our prison labor, which has absolutely exploded under neoliberal policy, is also by definition slave labor. Before Trump, over 40% of our agricultural labor force were undocumented immigrants - modern slaves.
I’m sure if you looked hard enough, you’d see how much suffering and exploitation went into every single item around you.
suffrage, the New Deal, income tax
Ancient history, and none of these things besides suffrage truly represent the left, which is commonly associated with socialism and egalitarianism - the left was historically coined to describe socialists. And it’s worth mentioning Democrats are further right than most European center-right parties.
gay rights
You could even be a bigger fascist and authoritarian than Trump, including being a Christian, and be in support of gay rights. See Peter Thiel, self-proclaimed right-libertarian, who is the opposite of a libertarian in practice.
Democrats flying the rainbow flag is just as gross and meaningless as corporations doing it: it’s branding. Except now the branding requires that we sacrifice trans people to appeal to
centristsRepublicans/old-school conservatives and try to siphon voters from MAGA. Meanwhile, gay marriage is likely going to quickly be dismantled like everything else, while Democrats stand silent.But I did watch the Tea Party subvert and consume the republicans. It can be done to the democratic party as well.
Will this come in time to address the fresh water crisis? Will it come in time to address the climate crisis? How many trans people will die by suicide because it’s “too radical” to support them even a little bit? How many people will die because of preventable disease? How many people will forego higher education? How many people will be laid off and rendered homeless until we establish UBI? How many child slaves will be sacrificed in the mines so we can have new iPhones every year? I could go on and on and on.
It has to be in tandem with regular wins, like how the conservatives did it.
Progressives have been playing ball way more than you suggest. Enough. It’s become a game of dodgeball where progressives can’t throw, only take hits from the Democrats and everybody else. Shifting to the right is not an effective strategy for Democrats, not even a little bit. 1/3 of the country doesn’t vote, why the fuck is nobody looking at that group?
Saw your edit:
*I can’t believe I left out Roe v Wade
A Supreme Court decision. Which was never codified into law by Democrats…
I get it, but
🖕
No “buts”.
Liberation cannot be done with giving it to everyone, provided that fascists get buried 6 ft under.
It’s not liberation until it’s for everyone. But we won’t get there in one legislative fight, or even one legislative session, once and for all. It will always need to be fought for.
Conservatives won’t turn down a smaller victory for one that’s out of reach. That’s why they’re winning.
Ansolutely agree, people didn’t turn to being pro-abortion instantly. But with a long and gradual strifle.
But we should be aware to never give up that which we already have.
Welcome to your civilization. Where your rights are used to further agendas.
Edit:Not Progress
Ratchet effect, in real time. This is what harm reduction and blue no matter who buys you. Democrats are not your friend. The system cannot be reformed. We cannot vote our way out of this. Trans people need to arm up. Allies need to arm up. Look out for one another. Stay safe and good luck.
Democrats should really just embrace pro-gun politics and win over both right-wingers and left-wing gun owners.
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I’m always amazed at the idea that we left leaning don’t have guns. I’ve got a range a few miles away. While yes, i don’t have a basement full of guns. The number is definitely not zero. I think there are more left gun owners than is given credit.
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Would you like me to guess your sex and race? I’ve never repaired a 15th century submarine, twice the former though. I must just be an outlier.
I bought my crappy little gun for 80 bucks.
I guess I need to find out what tools I need to repair a 15th century… ohhhhh.
Haha
liberals won’t use them, leftists would
Now that’s a good answer. And i guess the distinction gets more relevant bybthe day.
I pray I’ll never have to pull a plunger on someone. But if that day comes, I’ll be real glad I already have a plunger.
Not what they mean at all. It’s just that social issues are secondary to winning the war.
This means putting it off until Conservatives can no longer stop us.
(Not trans btw, just believe in trans right)
Their strategy is currently losing the war, as well as social issues
My FB feed is still littered with die-hard liberals espousing views we could afford to debate 15, 20 years ago. Pollution and gun rights. Every word they say is heard differently by the other side and they still don’t get it. Fascists are taking over the US and they want to figure out how to recycle better.
True, but we’re losing it much faster lately.
My problem isn’t how fast we’re losing, it’s that the supposed “opposition” is pretty openly not fighting.
BE
Because the wealthy ones are the ones who actually drive any actual change, regardless of politics or effort. If they want hell on Earth, there will be hell on Earth. And they want hell on Earth.
Thanks. Glad I’m here for you to sacrifice.
Except none of the assholes people have proposed actually have good strategy. None of them are populists, just pro business liberals who are simple downgrades to the Democrats of last year, worse at everything including making up for what lost them 2024.
Oh, I forgot you can’t vote anymore. Argument moot I guess.
What a weak mentality from a fitting username. The voters must change to match the party in your mind, not the other way around. To suggest otherwise means I’m an anti voter or green party Russian agent. That’s the only possible interpretation for someone unwilling tolerate criticism of their tribe; that I’m an absolute strawman who isn’t enlightened enough to polish shoes with my tongue.
You aren’t going to get everything you want right away. People could not even handle climate change ffs! We should ensure our survival and dominance first, before implementing literally anything else.
They kept latching onto climate change as if it were some made up bullshit.
Pure idealism simply gets you nowhere. Why do you have to have everything NOW? No one said we will abandon trans rights altogether.
But it does not matter now. It’s armed resistance or nothing else.
“Trans people want basic human rights?!? What kind of crazy, idealistic world do you think we live in? We have to abandon you now, but don’t worry, we’ll totally come back for you after we get ours.”
- The party of spineless cowards that stands for nothing
it’s giving Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.
Not only Democratic politicians, I see it here in the Fediverse all the time. People seem to think that the Democrats winning is more important than human rights.
I just don’t understood that kind of dogmatic thinking.
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Because when the other side is explicitly promising a theocratic fascist dictatorship, you have to pick the lesser evil to even have a chance of things getting better without large scale violence.
What happens then, when the “lesser evil” gets in power, and rolls back 5% of what the facists did, bomb a bunch of innocient people, give mountains of money to their rich friends, and continue to attack “undesirables”?
It’s not that we’re simping for the Democrat leadership…
Yes you are
…it’s that we’re smart enough to realize it’s currently a binary system and the other option is exponentially worse.
But that’s not true. The other option is only slightly worse, and Democrats keep spending their time trying to get as close to that line as possible.
If they want our votes, they should try doing what we want, like supporting basic human rights, instead of supporting the fascists.
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Both:
- bomb kids
- fight against the working class
- fight against healthcare for all
- give tax money to their rich friends
- fight against human rights
- support genocide
- support large corporations
- support destroying the planet
- support suveillance systems
- support war
- fight aganst making the rich pay their fair share of taxes
- support rapists for president
- support authoritarianism
- openly fight against what their voters want
- support mass deportations without due process
- support the killing of american citizens
- support torture programs
But yeah, go ahead and tell me how much better the Democrats are.
What happens then, when the “lesser evil” gets in power, and rolls back 5% of what the facists did, bomb a bunch of innocient people, give mountains of money to their rich friends, and continue to attack “undesirables”?
Vote for the next lesser evil until its all rolled back and we have a non imperial foreign policy.
If you don’t work to build a leftist movement you’ll never have one. Voting for harm minimization is still helpful as we build.
Vote for the next lesser evil until its all rolled back and we have a non imperial foreign policy.
And hows that been working out? The lesser evil keep marching towards the right. They even fight against anyone who says we can do more than just roll-back 5%.
If you don’t work to build a leftist movement you’ll never have one. Voting for harm minimization is still helpful as we build.
Or we could just vote for leftists, instead of right-wingers who lightly cosplay as leftists in the hopes that one of these days, they’ll change course and become actual leftists.
And hows that been working out?
We’ve not been doingi it. Non voting is the biggest block for decades now.
Or we could just vote for leftists
Like I said
If you don’t work to build a leftist movement you’ll never have one. Voting for harm minimization is still helpful as we build.
We’ve not been doingi it. Non voting is the biggest block for decades now.
Yes we have. We did it under Obama, and Biden. Guess what happened? They rolled back %5 of the facist policy, beefed up the rest, gave handouts to their rich friends, took away more civil rights, and bombed the fuck outta people.
If you don’t work to build a leftist movement you’ll never have one. Voting for harm minimization is still helpful as we build.
And I’m saying: I am building one. By voting for actual leftists, instead of cosplayers.
Yes we have. We did it under Obama, and Biden. Guess what happened?
Non-voting is still the winner in those; further we don’t have a consecutive lesser evil in those, so that does not help as much as it could.
Still,
Voting for harm minimization is still helpful as we build.
Not everyone is going to have a leftist in their local and state ballot. Its rather privileged of you to say this is not helpful to the rest of us.
What happens is that there’s 5% less fascism. And also it doesn’t increase by whatever amount the fascism party would’ve increased it by.
The other things would’ve also happened (and more even!) under the fascism party.
I don’t want 5% less facism, I want a party that fights against facism, instead of supporting it. The Democrats spent their time building out the tools for fascism, then put on their shocked-picachu face when the facists use those tools.
Nobody wants just 5% less fascism. But your options are full fascism or 5% less.
What are you gonna do? Not vote for either party? You just removed a vote from 5% less fascism.
The reality is, there is a fuckton of fascists in america. If you want no fascism you gotta for for less fascism first, to signal to the political parties what you want. When they see that less fascism gives them votes, they will shift towards less fascism until there is none.
Just like Americans signaled so much that they want more fascism, that both the republicans and democrats got more fascists.
Nobody wants just 5% less fascism.
Aparently the Democratic leadership does, since that’s what they keep doing.
But your options are full fascism or 5% less.
That is not true, but the Democrats have convinced a lot of people that it is true. We have a ton of options.
If you want no fascism you gotta for for less fascism first, to signal to the political parties what you want. When they see that less fascism gives them votes, they will shift towards less fascism until there is none.
You mean the same party that have spent the past few decades ignoring their voters? The same party that helped build out the tools that the facists are using, even when their voters didn’t want those systems?
A vote for Democrats tells them that, even when they support things like facism, genocide, and taking away human rights, you are gonna stick with them. I’m not going to, because I am against those things.
Don’t worry, I’m not American, I don’t have to stick with no American political party.
You claim that you have other options. Which ones are those? The third parties that will never win because the system strongly favours a 2-party system?
You realize the left needs to win for us to have human rights? Your critique makes literally zero sense.
Are you talking about the party that isn’t able to win, and also doesn’t support universal human rights?
Maybe they would have more luck with the former, if they tried the latter.
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If the left needs to win, then we can’t vote for most democrats.
Probably traditional tribal resistance to criticism that calls into question dominant cultural scripts. It’s the same instinct that demands resistance only be peaceful and legal.
Winning an election is step one. Policies that benefit everyone (except maybe the very top) is next. Then win the next election and pull the country left. Then rinse and repeat. We didn’t get here overnight.
But Democrats aren’t winning. They are moving to the right and losing. In the rare circumstances where they do win, they generally end up supporting right-wing policies anyway. It’s almost like there’s a correlation between those…
We have two different problems. The democratic party as everyone knows, is a feckless bunch. So it must be turned into a viable party once again. But we can’t rehabilitate it and kneecap it at the same time. They also have to win (and then cycle/replace candidates that aren’t with the program.)
The Tea Party did it to Republicans. We have to do it for Democrats… It would also be great to erode resistance to ranked choice voting.
It’s a tall order. We should have been doing it twenty or thirty years ago.
The Democrats learned from what happened to the Republican party, and set up systems to prevent that from happening. You can keep fighting to rehabilitate them, but I’m not gonna waste my time. Just like you can fight to rehabilitate the Republicans if you want, but I’m not gonna hold my breath for that either.
As an AAPI kid, I am more than used to liberals and leftists abandoning and shitting on us at the drop of a hat. In a just world? That wouldn’t fucking happen. In the world we live in? I’ll settle for not being actively attacked. Let us fight the slow burn fight just don’t actively harm. Just so long as it wins elections and does overall harm mitigation.
But that isn’t the case. Democrats increasingly try to be “republican lite” and it just doesn’t fucking work. Because the DNC seems to believe the bullshit that the republicans are full of “bush era republicans” and “mavericks” who all hate what the party has become and are just looking for an opportunity to do the right thing. And they completely ignore that all those “mavericks” still vote lockstep with the magats (barring one or two personal issues) because they actually also want the hate and suffering but don’t like that it isn’t them who are leading the charge.
But when one candidate is running on the gas chamber for all trans people and the other candidate just wants to rough them up a bit? The hateful shitheads aren’t going to settle for less. But to everyone else? “Both sides suck”.
There are more important reasons we need to oppose the “lesser evil.” I simply have no faith that they can defeat the fascists in their current state, which means we need to at least shape them up before the next chance they have to take power. Unless they become more competent and politically capable, they might not be able to capitalize on Trump’s inevitable death, nor will they be able to maintain power for long if they make the same mistakes as Biden.
The only way they will not be weak and useless is if there is a capable left wing they need to contend with. It’s why they oppose Mamdani more strongly than Trump; they would no longer have a solid monopoly on progressives, and would need to share capitulate to maintain an alliance.
I can understand the cold hard logic of opposing highly progressive candidates (in favor of people like Biden and Kamala who were progressive but are also very much in the DNC’s preferred overton window). The US is a fundamentally conservative country. Going too Left as a party opens the Democrats up to “bunch of fucking socialists” rhetoric and can potentially lose a LOT of purple states.
I personally don’t agree that attacking Mamdani et al is the right answer and I very much point at people like AOC who started as a firebrand and will still fight “when it matters” but has also learned that she needs additional support in Congress to do anything.
But yeah. The Democrats as they stand? trump could broadcast himself raping a toddler from the oval office and the best we can hope for is a bunch of old white guys awkwardly nodding their head to the Hamilton soundtrack while shouting down anyone who dares to try to capitalize on things.
At the end of the day: Politics is compromise. And, at the national level, a lot of those compromises are inherently increasing the suffering of others. While I will never say that throwing someone under the bus is “worth it”, it is hard not to awkwardly talk around it when it leads to a win and an overall net good. But we don’t have that. We consistently see the Democrats pivot to the right while not actually getting anything for it other than demoralizing the base more and more every day.
One needs a stronger position to make a more favorable compromise, which will also do more to invigorate the right and left of the Democrats. If the right wing Dems feel they can rest on they’re laurels, they neglect the base and are weaker against the GOP. If the left of the party is highly motivated by winning seats and gaining power, the right will need to work harder to maintain control of the party. It’d really be emblematic if the monopolistic tendencies of capitalists in a system that only innovates when they don’t have what they want.
Transphobia IS gender fascism
