The victories were a clear rebuke of Trump’s politics, but also a referendum on the Democratic party’s own centrism that is complicit in the violence of masked men hunting immigrants, the funding of a genocide and the denial of healthcare to citizens of the world’s wealthiest country.
…Hakeem Jeffries, who is running for speaker of the House, will not commit to holding a vote on abolishing ICE. He opposes Medicare for All. He has said he will not hold Trump accountable for the human rights violations committed, portraying it as a question of “getting even” rather than achieving justice where it was denied. Chuck Schumer, who holds similar positions, has an extraordinarily low approval rating – yet plans to run for majority leader in the Senate. Electeds are questioning whether these men should hold these roles.
But the dissent must also come from us, as it has been. We need to demand an end to the fast violence of guns on our streets trained on our neighbors, bombs dropped from the sky and the slow violence of people dying because their healthcare was denied or their food stamps were cut.
We need to organize, and mobilize, to demand the multi-racial democracy we were promised – not a playground for the rich to get richer on the time and labor and lives of the poor.
Yeah, this is it. I appreciate the uncertain language of whether or not centrism “won” the 1992 election as well. It really is just an oversimplification where everyone but the establishment loses. The results from the last decade or so should be data enough to show that the way things are measured is fundamentally broken. While the whole left/right liberal/conservative paradigm is still the pervading “default” mode of thinking in the meta of American Politics, but it’s increasingly coming under more scrutiny, especially after this last election once again failed to produce predictions that had the results within their parameters. I think a good portion of that lies in this weird idea that many dem and even academic circles are getting recently that “populism is a right-wing thing”, which is once again predicated on the paradigm of left/right liberal/conservative. Almost like people really aren’t that simple or something…
I’m sure it is very convenient to the reigning political duopolies in the world to have people self-organise into two broad “teams.”
I’ve seen it happen in real-time, where I’ll agree with someone on 90% of the facts, but then we’re off on the last 10℅ and suddenly we consider eachother wholly on the “other side.”
Then if you’re already labeled as being on one side or the other, and you have two major politicians representing just these two broad sides with barely any room for nuance, who are you going to vote for? Some loser 3rd party isn’t on a team, and just has human opinions??
Anyway yeah