Summary
Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez condemned Donald Trump and Elon Musk at a packed Arizona rally, accusing them of harming working-class Americans and promoting oligarchy.
Sanders denounced corporate CEOs as “major criminals” exploiting workers, while Ocasio-Cortez called for stronger Democratic leadership.
Rallygoers urged Ocasio-Cortez to challenge Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer after he supported a Republican funding bill.
The rally, part of Sanders’ “Stop Oligarchy” tour, follows criticism of the Democratic Party’s weak response to Trump’s agenda and features further events in Colorado and Arizona.
I was there. It was awesome seeing so many people. I prefer Mutualism over Democratic Socialism, but like AOC said there, “no matter if you disagree with me on a few things, if you are willing to fight for someone you don’t know, you are welcome here.”
I’ve even been telling my friend group that now’s not the year to criticize tankies so long as they’re fighting fascists
I really hope this “AOC takes over the Democratic Party and saves America” arc has a happy ending
She’s a young, outspoken woman of color. Old white people would never let it happen, even if half are in a nursing home mainlining Fox News straight into their frontal cortex and can barely walk on their own.
A lot of folk are still recovering from Obama being elected twice.
At least Bernie looks familiar to them, so the hatred will be tampered.
Actually the groups that swung the election for Trump were young men (HUGE swing), and immigrants (despite voting against their own interests and pulling the ladder up behind them for future immigration).
Senior men were more likely to vote for Kamala than young men.
Not really. There wasn’t a huge swing of people switching from Democrats or independents to vote for Trump. Those target groups just decided not to vote. In other words, it’s not like more people are relating to Trump’s messages, but it’s people not relating with either’s message and feeling apathetic. This is why Trump bashing isn’t helping. There needs to be genuine improvement of the Democratic party itself.
Immigrants did still vote for Kamala as a majority (55%).
I wasn’t aware of the massive jump Trump had achieved with young men. Looks like it was especially true with young white men, with nearly two thirds voting for Trump. Less than 30% of young men from other racial demographics voted for Trump with the exception of Latinos (45%).
Overall the biggest jumps were with Latinos and young white men but he saw an increase in nearly of every demographic except older white people with whom he has historically had majority support.
The powers and process screwed over Bernie in 2016. It would have unquestionably been a clear victory over orange circus clown. He would have been one of the greatest leaders in the 21st century. Now he’s too old, even though the fire is still in him. But we do know now that America hates women, especially of colour, for leaders. AOC wouldn’t have a chance until a huge social upheaval to change such attitudes and core hatred has occurred, possibly the Civil War 2/WW3.
Just like how past world wars created the world we live in today. Before WW1, before men of all social classes bled together in the trenches of Europe it was quite a different attitude regarding the rights of people and classes compared to after the event. The schools of fascism and communism was very enticing to populations after such a wanton and colossal loss of life by poor leadership on the battlefields.
Clinton and Harris didn’t lose because they were women. They lost because their campaigns were broken.
Harris was sabotaged by Biden trying to cling to power despite not being fit for the job anymore and Clinton thought she had such a guaranteed win she didn’t even bother to try to counter her image as the career politician that was everything wrong with government at the time. They would have both still lost even if they were old rich white men.
And, before you say it, Biden only won because of the pandemic. If people hadn’t been dying in droves at the time, we would have already finished with Trump’s second term by now.
a sanders/occasio-cortez ticket would work, and basically be a coronation for her, if we can do enough work to still have elections in four years.
I unfortunately have to agree with you. With how the Harris election results went, i don’t think people are ready for a woman president, let alone a brown one. The median American is too stupid, racist, and sexist.
I think this is not the right conclusion to draw from Harris and Clinton lost to Trump. They were both right-center Dems with lots of anti-left positions. Clinton voted to attack Iraq even though we all knew there were no WMDs and had been a polarizing figure for decades, she was not a good candidate. Neither was Harris, she was corporate, didn’t condemn the genocide in Israel, and courted the Cheney vote. That isn’t how to get the left to turn out. Neither had a good platform. Mitt Romney lost and so did John McCain and John Kerry I don’t hear anyone condemning Mormons or veterans being losing classes of candidates.
A principled woman who isn’t a corporate shill or pro-genocide is completely different. Our system is broken, pretending a little adjusting of the regulations or pretending the other side is acting in good faith and being gracious is clearly a losing strategy.
This is some actual leadership looks like. It’s not something that commes around every 4 years around election time trying to triangulate a voting block.
Save your praise until they actually win some victories. Marches and rallies are a good start, but they don’t necessarily translate into political action. Remember the women’s marches in 2017? The largest single day protest in American history and it did exactly two things: jack and shit. People went out, waved signs, went home, and Trump flipped three court seats and ended Roe.
Bernie in particular has always been great at turning out a crowd, but he’s never been able to turn that into political or legislative victories.
Ok so 4 years from now, when the major complaint has been gathering support only happens during election time…
Right. Now is the right time to start.
But it’s too soon to tell if that effort will accomplish anything, because the effort has to be sustained through 2026 and 2028.
And the people showing up waving signs have to become politically active - not just showing up and going home, but writing their congresspeople and boycotting companies and knocking on doors to get out the vote and so on and so forth. Bernie and AOC can stump all they want. If they don’t inspire people to act it means nothing.
The Democrats need a grassroots movement - as angry and passionate and hopeful as the Tea Party was - not just speeches by celebrity pols. It’s too early to tell if liberal citizen voters will accept their responsibility to build that movement.
Here’s what I’d like someone to explain: suppose we have four (or even eight) years of president AOC.
Everything is going dandy. Palestine is recognized. Student loans are discharged. Maybe we’re even on track to get a public option. Etc. We get everything we want.
It seems like it only takes 1 (ONE) election cycle for Dems / Liberals / Progressives to stay home and be like “naaah, I just don’t feel it this year…Not gonna vote” to undo everything. Dems have had a slim majority in the house for the last 20 years. SC is one seat away from disaster.
We are only in month #2 of Orange Fucks presidency and look at all the damage he’s done. We’re back to square one. Nothing changes. I’m starting to get blackpilled about the whole democratic experiment. Someone give me some perspective please… I just don’t trust the American voter any more. The only consistency is Maga will always show up to vote no matter what piece of shit is written on the ballot. Dems / Liberals / Progressives: we need to move mountains to get any political coalitions or clout to achieve anything.
You’re getting blackpilled because your scope of what liberal democracy is is incredibly limited and almost childish. Student loan forgiveness? Recognizing Palestine? Those are useless carrots dangled in front of you that do not materially change the country or even count as policies.
If you want to lock out authoritarians for another 100 years and have a real democracy you need to think bigger and grow up. Fundamental voting procedures need to be overhauled. The judiciary needs to be completely removed and then reinstated with additional safeguards against partisanship. Return to a gold standard and abolishment of stocks. Yes, the entire stock market. Quite frankly the entire constitution needs an overhaul to a degree where the old one should just be tossed into a fire and the flag changed afterwards to reflect all these changes to the country.
THAT is what is needed. To remove FUNDAMENTAL and ENDEMIC problems that have been plaguing this republic for 200 years now!
But instead of thinking about that, you just prefer some free money in the form of debt forgiveness. And that’s why Trump won and he and his successor will keep winning for the foreseeable future.
You somehow missed my entire point and managed to focus on the least important aspects of my question. The situations I described were hypotheticals reflecting the best possible world.
My entire thesis is all it takes for one election cycle for progressives / leftists / liberals to not bother getting off the couch and everything we work for si setback another 100 years. It will take sooo much time to undo what Elon and Trump have done it just the past two months. I don’t care about the goddamn student loans. My argument is democracy doesnt work, does it?
They are arguing that a real progressive would try to fix democracy. Overturn citizens United. Get money out of politics. Push for an alternative to first past the post. Remove the electoral college. You do those things and fascism becomes much easier to defend against.
You have way too much politics in the US, your judges, police chiefs, ad’s should never have been political.
We must get rid of gerrymandering and the electoral college. Nothing will ever change until that shit is gone. Until then, rinse and repeat.
voter suppression is the main issue besides gerrymandering, republicans would never have won that many seats, if they dint do this, and heavily propagandized apathy. voter suppression barely occurs red dominated areas. voting machine rigging is almost never addressed either.
Liberals and progressives staying home wouldn’t matter if the democratic party appealed to the working class as a whole instead.
Don’t forgot gerrymandering and the electoral college. The EC didn’t matter this time (barely), but most of the country does want change for the better. Part of the problem is people don’t feel their votes matter because of the EC and another is simply voter disenfranchisement.
In that ideal world, the ratchet effect would finally work in the opposite direction. Instead of the left being dragged right, we would drag the right to the left. And honestly, it wouldn’t be as hard as you might think. Think of social security. There’s a fuckton of republicans that hate new social safety nets and food stamps and shit, but you’d have to pry their social security out of their cold, dead hands. I’ve already heard plenty of republicans and even full on trumpers complaining and worrying that trump and elon are going to take away their social security. The reality is, even if they don’t like it during the election cycle, once you give them a social safety net, it’s really hard to take it away from them. So you create a new standard for them, a new bottom bar that the right can’t cross for the majority of voters. In that ideal world, we’d also strengthen education across the country because education is the first defense against fascism. As the next generations are better educated, it will become harder and harder for the right to trick them into voting against their best interests
Replacing the Citizen’s United court decision with actual law would go a really long way towards keeping corporate money out of politics.
If the DNC wants to continue to exist they need to give up on the idea of being the good conservative party. That’s why their base doesn’t show up. You can only be held hostage for so long before you just give up and let happen what will happen.
If they would actually pass real reform and genuinely try to make the lives of the worst off better, they’d never have to worry about the republicans again.
I agree. They should stop being republican lite. It’s frustrating for sure.
But look at it this way: the Dems passed boring ok policies. Nothing spectacular. ACA? Sure. It’s something. But on one hand we have lame attempts at passing reform and general policies that do a little progress. On the other hand: oligarchs tearing down everything to build a technocratic crypto fascist state. And even that is not enough to get people to vote. So, we can’t get people to vote in general. That’s the issue. We could have Cheguevara bringing the revolution to America or whatever, but these people don’t show up. Obama was charming and bam, Trump undoes everything. Where are the safeguards?
Republicans on the other hand, have the anticrhrist on the ballot and they all pull up to the booth. Every. Time.
People have decided they want a quick death rather than a long, drawn out collapse. You want to change that, try fixing things.
The boomers will die eventually, and with them, their antiquated ideas.
The world is now aware billionaires are a huge issue and countries around the world are taking more precautions to prevent what is happening to the USA from happening in their countries.
Religious fascists will always be an issue, but we can combat that with education, taxing churches, and persecuting people like Alex Jones, Joe Rogan, and Elon Musk.
That’s why they all rallied behind Trump-- they know their days are numbered and the people want their fat heads in the guillotines.
While you are right I do think that a good number are boomers, there are still young people grasping onto these ideas. I am a millennial and have worked with different people across many age ranges who are very conservative including my age or younger. Unfortunately this hyper conservative movement may not go away anytime soon in my opinion.
But I do hope that people in America and elsewhere like you said remain aware of the billionaire parasites that feed off the people. My hope is that some day the conservative ideals squeeze and overstep with their followers so much that they finally wake up and choose different ideals. I hope it happens soon and we can change the future of the world
Years ago, I read a scientific journal article about how male elephant aggression increased drastically after the older male elephants (bulls) in the herd were killed by poachers and hunters for their big tusks.
The article explained that the bulls provided structure for the younger males by basically slapping them over the back of the head whenever the younger males did something not very cash money.
Not only that, the bulls were also role models for the younger dudes on how to sweet talk the ladies, because after the bulls were killed, the lady elephants were rejecting the younger male elephants because they were huge fucking douches-- even the fucking elephants are dealing with incels.
All it takes is the removal of safety nets in our communities, and their absence means we are all struggling really hard to work, parent, volunteer, teach, and mentor all these children growing up while being aware their whole childhood that the future looks really bleak for them.
I think younger generations are angry and depressed, and that’s coming out as racism, sexism, transphobia, anti-immigrant rhetoric, etc. They are flocking to Joe Rogan because their only friend at school got into Joe Rogan and well, they don’t have other older gentler friends to smack them upside the head with the elephant trunk of wisdom.
Society has failed them, so they want to change it to what they think would work for them.
If we take the time to engage with as many young people as we can, and provide hope and guidance, we can better combat the red pilling.
Many of us do not take the time to coach youth sports, do the big brother/sister program, or volunteer to help at community events for children.
So when these kids grow up, they don’t have a healthy ring of cool adult models to emulate or ask advice from.
I am proud to say I have many friends 10-20 years younger than me, and I have loved watching and helping to guide them all to grow into compassionate and thoughtful adults.
And at least one of them started out as a red pill incel, so you have me to think for turning him to the side of compassion, love, and critical thinking.
You are ALL welcome-- it weren’t easy.
The old boomer’s idea of conservatism has already died. Congratulations, you already got what you asked for. It was replaced by a technocracy. Or neo-fascism. Call it whatever you want, but that replacement is thoroughly supported by young people. Zoomers more than millenials.
Statements like yours incite me quite a bit, because I’ve used to say the same thing. “Boomers will die out soon and then we get to take over”. That was 30 years ago. It got worse, not better.
I hear you, if you think about this:
Technocrats are a group of people.
Boomers are an enormous generational cohort.
A cohort that is really struggling to let go of power and allow their descendants to shape the world.
Most of them were raised to always put their careers first, so that’s all they know how to do-- they don’t know how to just smoke a blunt and chill like the cool boomers do.
Likewise, while I’m undoubtedly one of the cool millennials, the time will come when it will be obvious to me that it is time for us millennials and our antiquated ways to go, and allow the new world to use the resources and the space we will leave behind.
It’s part of the natural cycle of life on this planet.
So it behooves us to do everything we can so that our descendants are mostly sad that we are gone, instead of deeply relieved we’re finally dead.
The 1% exist because the boomers voted for Reagan and voted for Trump.
And it’s not that boomers are better off dead-- my mama is a boomer, and I love my mama!
Everyone who knows her does!
My mama is an indigenous woman who lives on a mountain, probably has negative carbon footprint on this planet because she never wants anything but good company and old-ass movies. She is always out there helping strangers, taking stray dogs to the vet to get spayed, picking up trash, planting flowers, etc.
She’s happy.
But even she’s like “I’m ready to peace out, the world’s too complicated for me, most my family is suffering, and all the people I grew up are dead or dying.”
That’s not what very powerful boomers like Trump, Netanyahu, Pelosi, Schumer, Mr. Brain-worm-with-measles, etc. are doing, and there’s a ton of them that will not step down until death takes them.
Hopefully we’ll all be the wiser from this experience, about prioritizing happiness over control.
You’re banking on a generation of red-pilled fascists to fix the problem? Social progress is not a guarantee when older generations die out.
Your “solutions” rely on the Rule of Law and Separation of Powers, both of which were dissolved after Trump v. United States.
You’re about ten years behind what’s actually happening.
In the United States, maybe.
The rest of the world is doing much better, especially since people are studying what is happening to the USA.
I wrote a different comment you can look up, but to combat red pilling, we all need to get more involved in youth programs and make ourselves available to growing adults and help provide structure & guidance.
Please flip the bird to the Democrats and run for president
