The Repub Tea Party was an abject failure. It succeeded in doing ONE THING during the Obama years: have a budget shutdown that accomplished nothing other than the shutdown itself. So why would you want a new activist effort to be called that, to have its branding associated with a previous failure?
As to my perspective on the Oligarchy Tour:: if we don’t get pro-worker, anti-pollution candidates running for Congress in 2026, we once again get jack shit. If we don’t get such a group running on a commitment to those ideals (avoiding all other things as an alliance statement that would only serve as an opportunity to be divisive wedge issues…), we will get jack shit. If we (or namely the only one who could pull it off: Sanders…) don’t assemble a gatekeeper committee insuring those causes are not betrayed as alliance members campaign and act in Congress, we get jack shit. [How’s about that use of the Ciceronian speaking style, commingled with the phrase “jack shit”?!]
I want to be pleasantly surprised by Bernie, Kyle; so far I am seeing a setup for a bunch of Indies to run who will end up arguing with each other over wedge issues -as you often now see being done among prog youtube channels! Sanders is going to have to hand-pick that gatekeeping committee, whether he likes to or not.
And if he doesn’t? Bring on the cat herd that will degenerate into arguments over wedge issues. I myself am not pro-oligarch for being in touch with that reality. I have an open mind: let’s see what happens. But he should have started the committee and called for candidates to petition to ballot for 2026 already…
The creative person in me says we should come up with a better name. But seriously folks, I don’t think we can achieve our goals through the legislative process until we have mobilized the people to vote with their feet and with their money. Right now the legislative body of our country (both Congress and the President) is beholden to the financial interests of their donors. Our true enemy is corruption. It’s about money and only about the money.
We need to use this corrupt system to our advantage. These politicians will not bite the hand that is feeding them so we have to do it. We have to fight them. If you donated against our interests or endorsed candidates who do not support our interests – you don’t get our money and you don’t get our support! Period. Until there is a financial disincentive for going against us we won’t get shit done.
between 12 and 50 Independent Reps running for 2026 appearing on all ballots;
they are all singing on the same page: pro-worker, anti-pollution (they can have other viewpoints; but they must not contradict those two, as decided by a Sanders-appointed committee…); and
they get the same promotion you now see the Oligarchy Tour getting;
you think they would have no chance??
I think they most definitely would. Will corporate media trash-talk them? Fer’ sure! That’s where progs and those who felt they were betrayed by Team Trump will need to flood youtube and various other social media to counter that. Do it on EU social media, which doesn’t play by the same skewed rules that Facebook and ““X”” does.
PS: If any Dems (like Tim Walz, Katie Porter, Andy Beshear, or Wes More…) want to sign onto that alliance and still remain Dem, that’s fine by me. But don’t be surprised when the day comes and you have to choose sides over worker and pollution issues!
Appearing on a ballot doesn’t mean you’re going to get elected. Don’t misunderstand me, I like the oligarchy tour. I think we should be doing a ton of that now. But if the electorate who voted in the last election are the ones who vote in the next one, it’s a no brainer. The indies are going to get creamed. That’s because we have ignorant voters who decide who they will vote for based on TV commercials, fox news, and talk radio. This is because the American people are generally ignorant and the right knows how to manipulate them. Even the ones who have college degrees don’t seem to pay attention in history class. I’m not an optimist or a pessimist. I’m a realist. I see no indication the American people objectively know the difference between right and wrong.
Agreed! But if you DON’T appear on the ballot, you have no hope whatsoever of getting elected.
This is where we will have to agree to disagree. Many voters who have remorse over TEAM Trump (including Repubs…): they clearly now know those outlets betrayed them too! They’re not going to buy more of the same shit sandwiches. Add to that: it’s NOT a pendulum swing this time! An option would be offered that is NEITHER Repub or Dem.
This won’t be proven one way or the other until we try it! It’s not been tried. [Closest thing was Perot, and that is NOTHING like this situation now, and only involved a Presidential run, not an aligned group of Representatives.]
They know when they’re getting the wrong end of the stick on worker conditions!
Do they know about pollution being wrong? Ones who lost loved ones to high incidences of pollution do. Ones who can SEE the crazy amount of refuse that they are wallowing in do.
But here’s what will happen: Sean Hannity will tell them Democrats want to raise their taxes to pay for healthcare for illegal immigrants and prisoner sex changes…and that’s the ballgame. He’s already brainwashed them to believe that bullshit. This country doesn’t evolve until it’s back is to the wall.
Hannity is now discredited. Look at those REPUBLICAN Town Halls -you think the people speaking up at them will buy Hannity’s talking points anymore?
As to branding this alliance as “Dem”: it ain’t Dem!
As to branding this alliance as “Communist/Marxist/whatever”: time for people who have had enough of The Duopoly to flood the social media zone. They’ve been calling Sanders a commie for decades. Notice after the Trump disaster area, you don’t hear that much now? (except maybe on Fox/Newsmax/OAN; not that they won’t try to use it again, but it becomes less and less effective each time they do…)
We have to TRY it!
As far as a pejorative of “Commie”, I would counter: “You guys ain’t capitalists! You’re monopolists, which Adam Smith himself said was anathema to a healthy capitalist economy!”
Correction: Not Hannity, Trump will tell them all the left wants to do is raise your taxes and turn your kid into a tranny. They are lemmings who go wherever he goes. They’ll follow him right off a cliff. They will believe whatever he says. Don’t believe the polls.
Believe me! I DON’T! What I find helps keep a realistic perspective is when I see all the youtube thumbnails from October and November 2024 saying it was in the bag for Harris; that Trump was crashing out.
That’s another agree-to-disagree; we won’t know until we get there and try it. Taxes are mattering less and less to the working class (except at the stores! when they go to buy food…) Taxes matter if you have a fat stack; but guess what? That’s fewer and fewer voters because of capital accumulation into blackholes for a one-percent; right? Right now, the working class wants livable wages, a modicum of job security/continuity, and not having to be on call 24 X 7 for a meager wage. My argument is when food and housing costs are high in his aftermath, that will be all the cult de-programming they will need. There is a core that will never give it up; they believe that the alternative is intrinsically Evil. But each day, incidents in external reality are breaking it down for most of them.
You have a situation right now where the admin by their own admission say some innocent aliens were thrown into an extremely life-threatening situation, and now they won’t bother to extricate them from it. A lot of right-leaning people I know are not going to simply go: hurts to be them.
Who’s “Evil” then??
Not that he’s my hero (far from it…), but Rogan finding it a nightmare is a dying canary in the Repub coalmine.
That’s a wedge issue, as is immigration policy. How they should be addressed should be left up to Independent alliance members; no judgments by alliance members on that (UNLESS an alliance member were to refuse the basic civil liberty guarantees already established over many decades of precedent and presently existing law -no matter how much Trump, Miller, Bannon, et.al. believe that to be irrelevant…)
So getting hounded out of your job because you chose to be a Tran? That’s a basic civil liberties issue. Whether you get to play on the girl’s sports team? That is debated; each Independent can decide for themselves what the “proper” policy should be.
People like Emma Vigland might not like that; but is she liking Steven Miller running the show right now? Or some successor to him in a subsequent administration??
You need people seated in Congress…they need to appear on the ballot…and the Dems will now never allow agendas that don’t maximize corporate profits. From here on in, they are committed to a “we ain’t as bad as them” strategy, nothing more. They will wait for a pendulum swing reaction, and once back in they will ONLY do what their corporate owners want. Protesting and yelling at them will get you NO-THING.
Protests work when corporate media tries to make like there is not a problem; it’s a rebuttal to that. Examples:
Protesting the Vietnam war. Was corporate media ignoring that in the 60s? Yep!
Protesting the TARP bailout that had no strings attached to improve the behavior of the financial institutions that got them. Was corporate media ignoring that in 2010, making like there was no problem? Yep!
We are ALL aware at this point there is a problem with tariffs, “DOGE”, and Trump (other than a 10-20% cult minority in the Repub Party…) The Town Halls in many Repub districts have already shown that they are aware that there is a problem. MAGAs who work and are about to see their food prices go up will shortly be aware that there is a problem.
You can do something, Sanders, other than just giving speeches. Call for that committee that vets an Independent alliance based on the two primary issues that the corporate parties won’t touch: worker rights and cutting down on pollution.
What a wasted opportunity! When these protests were going on, they could have had petitions at them to ballot Independent candidates. But that would have required having a collective statement of purpose (worker rights and anti-pollution…) and a committee to enforce it…
I think the rebellion is going to be organic. At this point, people are mentally and emotionally entrenched. You wont convince anyone of anything, at this point. At least not with clever arguments or quips on social media. It is very possible, even likely, they will convince themselves, eventually. Its about the money and the primaries. One of the ways to maybe reach people is for all of us who are truly awake, to attend these protests with the intent of reaching Blue MAGA. Convince them that corporate Dems are NOT the answer to anything but more corruption. Blue MAGA leadership got us HERE!!! If we dont get progressives in the primaries we will be stuck with more corporate dems. I have a feeling people are catching on, in some big ways. When everyone is out throwing each other under the bus for letting this happen, more will be exposed. I believe AOC is leading in polling for the New York Senate seat held by Chuck Schummer. I am hopeful.
It is going to be organic and it is going to take time. Whether it is a new leftist party or the real Left taking back the DNC; it is not something that will happen overnight and will be struggle to accomplish.
