this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2025
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These people are genuinely conspiracy brained morons.

“Places like City Hall and Albany and even Washington, DC, are more responsive to the groups than to the people on the ground,” New York Rep. Ritchie Torres said at WelcomeFest, held at a downtown Washington hotel and billed as a forum to help the party find more electable candidates and messages.

Seconds after Torres’ shot at “the groups” that have become intra-Democratic shorthand for excessive left-wing influence, protesters from … the group Climate Defiance charged on stage with signs reading “GAYS AGAINST GENOCIDE” and “GENOCIDE RITCHIE,” attacking his support for Israel’s war in Gaza.

As the activists were yanked out of the room, conference organizers played Carly Simon’s You’re So Vain on the loudspeakers in the room.

The mockery was part of the point. Welcome PAC, the main organizer of the conference and one of several outfits that have emerged in recent months to try to reverse the party’s post-Obama losses, was happy to be accused of embracing a pro-growth “Abundance” agenda or attacking progressive urban policies.

“Any time someone is against something like ‘abundance,’ it means that they’re afraid of something. They’re afraid of losing power,” said Welcome PAC’s Lauren Harper Pope, a former Beto O’Rourke adviser. “If the left feels threatened by what we’re doing, then I say: ‘You’re still welcome in our coalition.’”

[...]

“If you can financially afford to go to a protest every day, you are a different person than most people in my community,” said Washington Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, defending her vote for House GOP legislation that would require proof of citizenship from every voter.

Asked about recent polling from the progressive group Demand Progress that found pro-business “abundance” ideas faring worse than anti-corporate “populism,” WelcomeFest speakers scoffed.

“It’s what happens when you test an economic textbook for the Democratic Party against a romance novel,” said Rep. Jake Auchincloss, D-Mass. “It’s such a bad poll.”

Shadowy """groups""" who are supposedly coordinating every protest, protestors are all on payroll or rich or unemployed so therefore they don't count, activists and """groups""" are never part of or representative of even a section of the public, and all polling showing their framing and ideas being unpopular are just bad polls. This is conspiratorial thinking, 1:1 with what conservatives and Republicans have been saying for decades.

And they're repeadedly wrong on the polling they claim to love so much.

All because people got mad at the and demanded they do their jobs, demanded they actually stand up for people who are literally being picked up and deported for no reason besides not liking Trump or having an accent when they speak.

WelcomeFest’s less single-issue enemies have highlighted the Republican and pharmaceutical-industry pasts of some of the conference’s donors, arguing that it’s naive to think billionaire donors could save the Democrats.

The Revolving Door Project, which has campaigned to keep Democrats with corporate ties out of powerful positions, called the whole project a “self-serving crusade” against popular politics.

“A billionaire-funded movement to keep billionaires happy with Democrats by wielding only poll-tested language that billionaires are okay with is a sure path toward a President Vance,” said the project’s executive director, Jeff Hauser.

Dan Cohen, the strategist who conducted Demand Progress’ abundance-or-populism poll, said that the party wasn’t facing a binary choice and could incorporate some more pro-growth “abundance” ideas into a successful populist campaign.

“That kind of conflict is unhelpful because it’s just wrong,” Cohen said, calling for a broader focus on “strengthening a Democratic Party that’s trying to get its sh*t together again.”

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[–] Mrkawfee@lemmy.world 29 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Liberal would rather see the far right in power than the left.

[–] codexarcanum@lemmy.dbzer0.com 23 points 4 days ago (3 children)

OK but, hear me out: fuck the Democrats. When are we getting behind a new party; a real, actual, authentic, left-wing, coalition party? Where is the national movement to unify and overthrow the duopoly?

[–] Amnesigenic@lemmy.ml 8 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Never going to happen through the current electoral system, it's carefully designed not to allow for a third party to win, and the only people who have the power to change that system through legal means have no incentive to do so. The only way it'll happen without violence would be something close to a general strike on a national level, unfortunately I don't see that happening any time soon either.

[–] Grapho@lemmy.ml 4 points 4 days ago

People are already organizing for a general strike generalstrikeus.com

Sign your strike card and if you're able, organize. It won't happen any time soon unless people work for it to happen.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 6 points 4 days ago

PSL is slowly but steadily growing.

[–] for_some_delta@beehaw.org 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Why build another party? The bourgeoisie built a new power structure under feudalism.

Prefiguration is about building new power structures within existing structures.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Organizing is the tool of the Proletariat taught by Capitalism, and vanguard parties have successfully implemented Socialism many times already. Scientific Socialism is the correct method. The bourgeoisie did not prefigure society, there was large capture of resources during primitive accumulation that led to a toppling of the aristocracy, often via revolutions, as these classes came into conflict.

Shocking no one on the left, this fight isn't new. It's just dumber and dumber to keep fighting the growing left, so they're framing it as a new problem, not an old one that's steadily grown and could have been avoided.

[–] njm1314@lemmy.world 8 points 4 days ago

There's nothing a liberal lives for more than stabbing a leftist in the back

[–] dRLY@lemmy.ml 5 points 4 days ago

Let them continue to care more about "not rocking the boat" or whatever head in the ground shit they refuse to face. I will keep interacting with co-workers, friends, family, and the random strangers that ask me about my PLA hat or my hammer/sickle lapel pin after I have helped them (never a bad interaction even from folks wearing lots of USA flags on their shirts/hats after they see how much I really cared about their problem). It is about being okay with having those interactions, and being a real human with real concerns. Of course I will also keep getting ammo and get better with my aim. No centrist/moderate or fascist will take me, my comrades, or my arms without a fight. There are plenty of things that finding a middle ground is fine, but not genocide and not continuing the oppression of the working and the poor.

[–] IttihadChe@lemmy.ml 7 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

"How many times do we have to teach you this lesson old man!" ~ The left.

But the old man is a masochist and part of a broader coalition and his role is to distract us with beating him while the rest of his group sacks the town.

Then when they are making their escape he jumps up and says "we could have stopped them if we worked together ! Look what you've done!" And keeps intentionally getting in our way while we try to chase the ransackers.

Then when they have escaped successfully he moves in with them and shares the loot while planning the next mission.

[–] doubtingtammy@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 days ago

They make it sound like a "fight" will be the usual primary politics. But I fear The real fight will just be enabling GOP policies. Help ICE deport activists. Help remove trans people from public life. Crack down on all protests, etc.

[–] sleet01@lemmy.ca 3 points 4 days ago

I used to think Marie Gluesenkamp Perez was a useful idiot who'd taken up space better utilized by air. I still do, but I used to as well.

[–] Taleya@aussie.zone 1 points 4 days ago

If they're using pineapple signals they don't want a fight