Mark Hall

Living by their oath.

Some of us are - but we could use some help. More progressives running in primaries and especially VOTING in primaries. More progressives joining local parties to work their way up into delegate slots at the state and national conventions.

New reply here to catch both of you - it's about my bedtime, and y'all type faster than me. I'll come back tomorrow, try to look through all the links FP has provided, and we can pick up then. Bear with me, please!

Show me the leader they WILL vote for, then?

How could he have gotten it through the Senate?

But that four year cycle seems to be all we get - even Obama lost a ton of support in his second term because he couldn't fix everything instantly.

are only just starting to get a dim inkling of it. It's going to be a hard fight, we need to be prepared for reversals, and we probably need to tolerate some half-measures for longer than 4 years before we throw up our hands and say "it's hopeless, I refuse to vote for another imperfect candidate."

But I'm not convinced we can just put a brand new face up, state our obviously correct views, and win. We'd be destroyed. Mamdani shows we can go farther left than we have been, at least in NYC. But it took 60 years or more of structural corruption to get us into this mess, and most of the voters

And all of those battles took a LONG time to win, far longer than just presenting the obvious facts and letting the voters sweep us to victory.

Now, many of our Dem leaders are hopelessly compromised, and need to be replaced - Harris among them.

against smoking cessation; against drug legalization; against "welfare moms;" against LGBT rights; against "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (which was actual PROGRESS at the time); against unleaded gas; and so on.

But what *I* believe, and what I think can be sold to the overall electorate are not the same. I think we could be doing a lot more, more strongly pushing our platforms. But I see the same tools being used against us that were used against climate change; against evolution in schools TWICE;

Let me start with dealing with my age and location, I have honestly gotten FAR MORE liberal/progressive as I've aged. I suspect that our personal views are not significantly different - there's a reason I've been following you, after all.

Lots of data there. The YouGov poll seems compelling. The Gallup poll less so - that 8% is long after the election, as information started trickling down to the people who weren't paying close attention. But I'll need some time to digest the several sources you've provided.

Voter turnout in U.S. presidential elections by age 1964-2020| Statista Since 1964, voter turnout rates in U.S.

Oh, and as for the younger generation - they've been supposed to come out big and be game-changers every year since I was one of them. Never happens, not even for Obama. Even in 2008, they were below 50%. www.statista.com/statistics/1...

Healthcare, he had all he could do to keep the GOP from another round of "kill Obamacare" votes.

Y'all seem to be working on war plans that ignore the existence of the enemy. Their PR machine is POWERFUL, and can't be ignored even by your ideal candidate - whoever that is.

(Not that Biden would have gone that far, he's an institutionalist. But it wasn't even an option.) He went back and did a LOT of student loan forgiveness of smaller groups, everywhere he could. Likewise Green New Deal - he couldn't get it passed, but he did a LOT of smaller effort.

But you're repeating some of the very lies told by the people who would have led the destruction of Harris over abandoning Israel. Biden did NOT lie about student loans. He got overruled by SCOTUS, and couldn't get Manchin to lift the filibuster to pack the court.

The right of the Dems, the center of the electorate. You say they need to secure their base - but I'm not sure that the people who found reasons to skip voting for Harris, Biden, Sec'y Clinton, Kerry, and Gore actually count as a "base." This argument is way older than Trump's political career.

There are keywords that will turn off a good 20% of the vote instantly, and require MASSIVE reeducation to overcome. Redistribution, socialized healthcare (socialized ANYTHING), many others. And with apologies to Free Parking - one of them is AOC.

You really couldn't. Remember how Sanders tanked in the South Carolina 2020 primary? Stacey Abrams is more charismatic than Biden, Harris, and Buttigieg combined AND more progressive than two of them - and she still lost here in Georgia twice.

They were very vocal. I'm not convinced they were very large, certainly not large enough to make up for the people she would have lost on the right. Do you have actual stats to the contrary? Because I haven't seen anything actually on point for either guess, yours OR mine.

Honest question, that was - I'm truly looking for options. My best suggestions are maybe Katie Porter, maybe Duckworth? But they don't have the national-level scrutiny for me to really be sure even of their principles - let alone their ability to win.

...at the time. And honestly, I still don't. The two biggest names, Newsom and Pritzker, are both saying great things while doing very little, or even negative things. Mamdani is great, but not for President. Likewise AOC. Who could successfully take the reins and actually run on principle AND win?

And why they need to be replaced. But unfortunately, that's going to be a multi-election-cycle process (if we get the time), and requires leftists willing to engage with the party to build up strength for a takeover. I didn't see a good alternative to Harris with a better chance of winning...

Cosigned.
(SFC Hall, USA, Ret.)

For their efforts to pay off the way Miller et al. want them to, the incitement eventually has to result in violent, possibly deadly actions *against those agents doing the inciting.* I wonder how many of them realize that they are setting themselves up to first against the wall?

Perhaps, but that seems beyond the scope of the question, imagining a hypothetical candidate who has a full slate of more progressive policies than the two most progressive platforms we ever had. If nothing else had changed, the pundits and the GOP would have crucified them for "abandoning" Israel.

If they had come out strong against Israel at that time, Harris would have lost by more. Yes, even then it was obvious to anyone paying attention that Israel was conducting a genocide - but since when have most voters paid attention?

NOW, however, even (some of the) lower-info people know.

"I have been... and always shall be... your friend."

Two of the incumbents who approved the last several utility rate hikes are on the ballot. Vote them OUT!