Spent last night arguing with my liberal friends about Dems failing to pass min wage. Argued from the center left. Said Dem leadership needs to get its shit together and start getting the party in line. Otherwise theyre getting bodied in 2022 and never getting back in. They flipped out on me. Saying I was advocating for them to be just like Trump and the republicans.
Ive genuinely given up on them. I just dont get it. I dont know what to do. We're all queer and disabled. One of them constantly goes to protests and participates in her community. This wasn't even one of my hard left points. Like how the Dems are all psychos. Or the entire system is rigged. It was a genuine good faith argument about how the Dems need to change or we're gonna die. Im at a loss. How can you fix this?
I don't know your friends but if they're getting defensive like this over shit as petty as "I want your party to win, the way they're acting in congress will ensure they will lose and I agree that that would be a bad thing" means they probably are radicalizing right now. Otherwise they'd have confidence (completely unearned, mind) that the Dems are going to do the right thing and win enough support in 2022 and 2024 and they'd just say something like "Yeah I agree, but don't worry AOC and Pelosi will work it out in time for the midterms." Wouldn't be surprised if they start asking about DSA or whatever after 2022 midterms.
Things are so dire for the congressional dems, I saw some good analysis that for the midterms the Dems will have to match the best performance of the party in power for the 2022 midterms for them to hold onto majorities in the senate and house. Last time was 2002 for the GOP, right after 9/11 and they had that wave. If the Dems don't meet or exceed that performance they will lose the majority - even if they perform the 2nd best in the last 40 to 50 years. They also have a trifecta, right now, the mood of the country is for radical (relative to neoliberal centrism anyway) action and complete overhauls of the way politics is done at a national level - no more filibuster, stimulus checks out the door quickly and without means testing, admittance of DC and Puerto Rico, breaking the taboo of prosecuting former presidents, the mood of the country is for radical action and the Dems hold all the levers of power and have nothing to hide behind. So, if they're not doing their utmost to win favor and win people's votes, they will have no one to blame but themselves. Not that they won't try, I guarantee they'll be blaming voters for not voting for the Dems hard enough without something in exchange.
chances of the Dems eating shit so hard it breaks the party?
Lol I wish. I don't think that's likely to happen in 2022 though. If there's a countdown on the lifespan of the Dems it's still at least 10 years, if not longer (at which point it's difficult to have any meaningful foresight). The Dems also have historically thrived locally when they're the minority/opposition party; losing power means their expectations to actually do much are lowered and they can credibly convince more people that they actually want the power to change things despite the reality.
Assuming increased radicalization resulting from Everything Still Somehow Staying the Same and Getting Worse Simultaneously, we could be looking at the Dems going the way of the Whigs within the next couple decades, but only if the Dems start to lose their ability to devour social movements, and only if they lose their ability to credibly platform sheepdogs like Bernie Sanders or Jessie Jackson. That's been their key to surviving since the Southern Dixiecrats' pivot to the GOP in the 1970s. Securing the Black vote in the wake of the destruction of radical/revolutionary orgs like the Panthers, securing women's votes after women's lib/2nd-wave feminism was fully metabolized by the liberal feminism of the 1980s-1990s, that has added decades to the Democratic Party's lifespan. Biden would have eaten shit if not for his surrogates' ability to redirect anger at police/DHS agents towards anger at Trump, for their ability to capture much of the frantic energy from the BLM revival and covid crisis and sublimate it all into Voting the Orange Fascist Out.
Organizing for independent socialist politics including rejection of all Democrat entryism, continuing to agitate to keep common working-class people's expectations raised and organizing them to keep pushing back against reaction from liberals in governments all the way down to the local level, that's what will enable the slow death of the Democratic Party, its wane into Whig-like irrelevance.