In the USA, some Democrats have smelt the coffee when it comes to the perpetuation of corporate control of that party by DINOs - Democrats In Name Only.
Last week, a Mamdani-inspired left-of-centre slate swept the New York City primaries, shocking the party hierarchy, which is centred on perpetuating corporate control of US politics.
Now the New York Times reports:
Melat Kiros, a 29-year-old democratic socialist, defeated Representative Diana DeGette on Tuesday in the Denver area, according to The Associated Press, in a show of force for the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.
The triumph by Ms. Kiros unseats a 15-term incumbent and further propels the insurgent coalition that swept a series of congressional contests last week in New York.
Ms. Kiros, an immigrant and first-time candidate, was born the year after Ms. DeGette, 68, took office. Her victory in the solidly Democratic district all but ensures her election in November.
As they added:
[Ms. Kiros'] opposition to U.S. support for Israel was ... a cornerstone of her campaign and central to her political identity.
A ball has started to gather speed amongst younger Democrats, inspired by Bernie Sanders, motivated by the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, given courage by New York mayor Zohran Mamdani, and driven by a desire to be rid of the entryism of corporate funding that seeks to subvert politics from the public good and make it instead an instrument for the promotion of neoliberal greed.
If only we could have primaries to achieve the same goal here.
I wish these New Democrats well. They may provide lessons for the politics of care, which seems to me to be what they are seeking to promote.
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How to get rid of politicos that are well past their sell by date, in the UK, when the tory party is fossilised and the LINO party stalinised? … and the greens offer hope but remain very small.
I think intergenerational conflict is probably playing a part in US politics too? A lot of US politicians at the federal level are geriatric which has become an issue for younger voters. A lot of these unseated Democrats tend to be older and have been on the scene for a long time and I think there’s also a sense amongst younger voters that older people have enough wealth to make “third way” compromises to win elections in a way that they don’t (i.e. a 60 year old working class New Yorker might own a house and have a pension, so they can sort of tolerate centrist politics to keep the extremism of the Republicans out. Younger voters don’t have the economic resilience to do the same).
Obviously there is a lot of nuance in that and the reality is surely different to perception, but I do think that unless politicians are very clearly on their side (e.g. Sanders) then younger voters are going to boot older politicians out.
Much of the impetus for moving the Democrats to the left comes from organisations like the Democratic Socialists of America. The Democrat Party would prefer you didn’t know about it, and actively works against many of its candidates. It’s time has come hopefully.
https://www.dsausa.org/
Who we are
The Democratic Socialists of America is the largest socialist organization in the United States, with over 100,000 members and chapters in all 50 states. We believe that working people should run both the economy and society democratically to meet human needs, not to make profits for a few.
What we do
We are a political and activist organization, not a party; through campus and community-based chapters, DSA members use a variety of tactics, from legislative to direct action, to fight for reforms that empower working people.
Thank you
Voters in the USA want change, REAL CHANGE.
The insanity of the current Trump administration has turned voters against the status quo.
Hardcore Democrats are pi**ed-off that their party has done nothing to challenge and rein-in Trump.
A majority of hardcode and/or devoted Republicans have Brexititis; “this is NOT what we voted for” has appeared in many comment sections of US originated news articles and OpEds.
🙂
For info on UK experiments with primaries – ask the Tories.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_Party_%28UK%29_parliamentary_primaries
and also see Sarah Wollaston
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Wollaston
The party whips don’t like the idea (so that makes it worth considering).
🙂
But as Oscar Wilde said “The truth is rarely pure and never simple” . Let us hope that the politics of care are promoted and succeed – but pro tem, too many in charge with neoliberal greed.
Why neoliberal policies can not be overcome in the USA despite young Democratic Socialists.
1. The US Supreme Court has a conservative majority which holds a religious and philosophical view favoring conservative, wealthy, corporate donors to politics and favoring expanding the power of the President, until the President is no longer a Republican. The Court yesterday voted to remove limits on political parties’ campaign spending.
2. In 1971, Lewis Powell was invited to write a confidential memorandum for the US Chamber of Commerce titled “Attack on American Free Enterprise System.” In it, Powell called on American business to aggressively counter the rising social, environmental, and consumer movements of the era to protect the free enterprise system.
The Powell Memorandum ultimately came to be a blueprint for the rise of the network of influential right-wing lobbying. The rise of neoliberalism began here. (Two months after authoring the memo, Powell was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court.) In the 1970’s, lobbyists flooded Washington, D.C. Robert Reich discusses it here: https://www.facebook.com/reel/1592832331820185.
3. Realizing that they had to raise money to match the conservative flood, the Democratic Party also began lobbying and courting business donors.
4. Now, neither party can survive with corporate funding. Neither one.
5. Many of us have spent the past 40 years failing to get money out of politics, at the state and federal levels. We have failed.
6. One can game out what happens if a party declares war on money in politics.
So, what next then?
So far as I can see, several things have to happen, and they have different probabilities.
1. New and different sources of money have to arise to overpower the people like Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and the corporate donors that get federal contracts – Amazon, Lockheed Martin, Chevron, Comcast, Google, Palantir, BlackRock, Altria, Mastercard, etc. https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/crew-reports/fifteen-companies-have-contributed-to-at-least-three-of-trumps-pet-projects/
What might those be? I do not know. Michael Bloomberg tried. Al Gore tried. I think of public banking and sovereign wealth funds. State-owned or regional public banks allow communities to fund local infrastructure and social programs, rather than relying on profit-driven Wall Street banks.
2. We need circular economic models. Prioritizing the planet’s and humanity’s needs over private gain. How do we get there? Damfino. I fear a great deal of disastrous climatic collapse.
3. We need to transfer economic power to labor, with stronger unions, collective bargaining, living wages. How do we get there? Overcome this Supreme Court. How? Pack the Court. Add more justices. How? Outnumber the conservatives in Congress. How? Provide the newcomers with new sources of money, enough to overpower the existing Democratic fundraising machines. At present, each member of the House and Senate has to raise a certain amount of $$ every day – that’s working the phones every day, talking to lobbyists.
4. I like Modern Monetary Theory – the state’s capacity to create and direct public money directly to fund full employment, green transitions, and public services without relying on taxation or debt. However, getting there is fraught and I don’t know how.
5. The most important thing to do is get off oil, as we are now witnessing. It looks like the house of cards rests on oil, gas, and coal.
I repeat, I’m in the “We Failed” camp.
n both and , I wrote columns documenting that led to two big results.
Inequality rose.
Poverty dropped.
My message was very simple. It’s to worry about inequality. The should be poverty reduction. As such, China deserves praise for its shift away from dogmatic socialism (though there is still if it wants to become a rich nation).
For today’s column, let’s look at the flip side of this issue.
We’ll start with this chart, showing that inequality (measured by ) has slightly increased in the United States and significantly declined in the United Kingdom.
My leftist friends will look at that chart and applaud the United Kingdom for getting better results.
And they’ll applaud the policies that led to those results, some of which are listed in a recent Washington Post (also the source of the above chart).
Your charts not come out and as a result, I’m afraid that this comment makes little sense.