Conditions in 2020 were as ripe as they ever could be for an incursion into the party. There was no distinguished leader, factionalism among the party's right flank, an unprecedentedly reviled opponent in the Republican party which ensured whoever got nominated would likely win, and a media ecosystem which would be forced to accept Bernie as the nominee after calling Trump Hitler for four years. There was never, and will never be a better time to strike. I think this is the only reason why it was worth it.
We threw everything we had at it in the best possible conditions and we still couldn't even draw blood. The millions of people who donated and volunteered on the campaign have now been personally snubbed by the party, and seen the media and party work in concert to undermine their goals. Those people will never forget how the political system moved heaven and earth to prevent people from having any sort of relief. I consider this to be a necessary step in radicalization. It, more than anything else, is what's responsible for me abandoning the electoral arena forever. It made it clear who the real allies were, and who the bullshitters were. It put them through a test they normally are capable of escaping.
You can't radicalize the masses by knocking on the doors of strangers and asking them if they want to throw bricks at cops with you. You have to take them through the steps and show them that the game is rigged. When they get personally invested in a political movement and see for themselves how the elite conspires to crush them, that is what will take them to the next stage of radicalization. This is true for any kind of organizing. If you are working on radicalizing a tenant union, you can bring people together to make a modest and reasonable demand of the landlord. When the landlord rejects this reasonable demand, people will feel personally slighted, and become more willing to escalate.
Now, when it comes to engaging with Democratic Party politics, the conditions will never be as good as they were at the start of this year. It would be foolish to put anywhere near as much effort into it ever again, but millions of people went through those motions with us, and their minds have been opened to alternatives in the face of crushing defeat.
Lot of good points. Aside from the media and Dem establishment being against him the other main take away should be that the deep and low masses (people who don't vote) didn't buy into bernie's schtick. And this is for good reason! A lot of the working class and poor masses are way ahead of where online socdem leftists are at. They know nothing can be changed via the Dem party.
Conditions in 2020 were as ripe as they ever could be for an incursion into the party... There was never, and will never be a better time to strike.
Consider:
Material conditions will continue to deteriorate for vast swaths of the population.
The mainstream acceptability of socialism (or at least New Deal-scale approaches to problems like healthcare, education, and climate change) will continue to increase.
Bernie, for as good of a candidate as he was, still has a number of significant flaws. He's an old white guy from a tiny state who is honest but not particularly charismatic, he had to create a whole left-ish movement from scratch, and he had a health scare in the middle of a campaign.
It's not hard to imagine a scenario where people are worse off than they are today, where socialism is more popular than it is today, and where there's a better candidate on the left wing of the party.
Conditions in 2020 were as ripe as they ever could be for an incursion into the party. There was no distinguished leader, factionalism among the party's right flank, an unprecedentedly reviled opponent in the Republican party which ensured whoever got nominated would likely win, and a media ecosystem which would be forced to accept Bernie as the nominee after calling Trump Hitler for four years. There was never, and will never be a better time to strike. I think this is the only reason why it was worth it.
We threw everything we had at it in the best possible conditions and we still couldn't even draw blood. The millions of people who donated and volunteered on the campaign have now been personally snubbed by the party, and seen the media and party work in concert to undermine their goals. Those people will never forget how the political system moved heaven and earth to prevent people from having any sort of relief. I consider this to be a necessary step in radicalization. It, more than anything else, is what's responsible for me abandoning the electoral arena forever. It made it clear who the real allies were, and who the bullshitters were. It put them through a test they normally are capable of escaping.
You can't radicalize the masses by knocking on the doors of strangers and asking them if they want to throw bricks at cops with you. You have to take them through the steps and show them that the game is rigged. When they get personally invested in a political movement and see for themselves how the elite conspires to crush them, that is what will take them to the next stage of radicalization. This is true for any kind of organizing. If you are working on radicalizing a tenant union, you can bring people together to make a modest and reasonable demand of the landlord. When the landlord rejects this reasonable demand, people will feel personally slighted, and become more willing to escalate.
Now, when it comes to engaging with Democratic Party politics, the conditions will never be as good as they were at the start of this year. It would be foolish to put anywhere near as much effort into it ever again, but millions of people went through those motions with us, and their minds have been opened to alternatives in the face of crushing defeat.
Lot of good points. Aside from the media and Dem establishment being against him the other main take away should be that the deep and low masses (people who don't vote) didn't buy into bernie's schtick. And this is for good reason! A lot of the working class and poor masses are way ahead of where online socdem leftists are at. They know nothing can be changed via the Dem party.
Consider:
It's not hard to imagine a scenario where people are worse off than they are today, where socialism is more popular than it is today, and where there's a better candidate on the left wing of the party.