Mostly talking about stuff like breadtubers, chapo, and media personalities like that, I can kind of tell why people like Bernie and Jezza where they're at. Is it the added wealth being a popular media personality gives you, the need to give a consistent product, the need to appeal to a wide breadth of people, and so on?
edit: also props to Brett at RevLeft for continuing to radicalise himself as the show has gone on
A big part has to do with the Bernie loss. If the Dems did pivot to the left and actually pick a democratic socialist candidate, let's be real, that would have made the vast majority of people happy enough and alleviated some of the more pressing material conditions.
It's not crazy talk, they did it before with FDR, and a shallow reading of history shows it's possible. (Of course, FDR was dragged into his reform by organized labor, the existential military threat of fascism, and the less organized opposition to "socialist reform".)
Now that reform is clearly off the table... many of these pundits really don't provide a blueprint how to proceed. Their plan didn't work.
I've heard this a few times around here but, where can I find more information on the FDR being dragged left part?
In the 1930s, CPUSA had as many official members as the DSA do now (and the US population was less than half of today). That put a lot of pressure on FDR to work with more "moderate" figures like Walter Reuther, future head of the UAW who Khrushchev described as "somebody we would have hung in 1917" and would be denounced as a radical in 2020.