That’s why I’ve had this random fruit box for 6 years.

Woah buddy you want to make a bet Donald trump won’t be president in 3 years?

Yeah, I expect him to be dead in less than 2. He is looking pretty rough these days. Vance may try to fuck with the peaceful transfer of power, but I doubt it. He clearly doesn’t have the charisma or balls to be the face of a fascist regime.

I also doubt Platner is a Nazi and I’d say that, even if it turns out his rhetoric is hollow and fake, you’re better off gambling on him than centrists like Mills or Collins. But a lot of people disagree, and they’re gonna be up Maine’s ass about it until the election. It’s just one of the drawbacks of having a competitive Senate race.

OK, but you understand why people aren’t just worried about their own senate race, right? Donald Trump won’t be president in 2 to 4 years, and limiting the damage he does to our democracy in the meantime depends on what voters in a handful of states decide to do. The Senate is significantly more powerful than the House, and most of us will never vote in competitive Senate race.

I get it; I’m pretty fucking sick of Platner discourse as well. But what Maine and Texas decide is going to effect all of us for the next 6 years, and more crucially, it will determine whether or not Trump controls half of congress for the remainder of his term. It’s not reasonable (or accurate) to tell people, “butt out, this doesn’t concern you.”

Imagine if someone tried to have you murdered by a mob and this was the harshest criticism you could come up with.

Senators serve 6 year terms, and their terms are staggered so that only a third of them up for reelection during any given cycle, so there are only 33 (maybe 34) other elections to worry about right now. Factor in popular sitting senators who are unlikely to receive a primary or general challenge this year, and there are really only a handful of senate seats tor people to be concerned about. Off the top of my head, I can only think of Platner/Mills and Paxton/Talerico for the general elections, and the primary between Markey/Moulton (and I’m not sure if that has national attention or it’s just news to me because I live in Massachusetts).

YUP. I once had someone tell me that the educating people on Marxism was more important that voting, because giving more people an understanding of theory would bring about a post-capitalist society. Meaning, “actually, my internet arguments are very important.”

If you don’t believe in electoralism, fair enough. It’s certainly hasn’t been serving us well the last 40 years (and especially the last ten). But if you’re going to judge everyone that engages with the political process, then you better find something better to do: join a grocery co-op, organize a union, start a commune. If voting isn’t the answer, do something else. Something besides talking. (Anecdotally, I’ve found anarchists are more likely to do something community oriented, or at least risk getting their heads kicked in at a protest, than a lot of other leftists I’ve known).

Yeah, AOC’s record on Israel isn’t as good as Tlaib’s or Omar’s, but it’s still better than 95% of Democrats. Only an idiot or a liar would call her a Zionist because she didn’t vote for a symbolic amendment for a bill she voted against anyway.

Also, you’ll notice that the people who gleefully brand her a Zionist or a Neoliberal never have an alternative to tell you about. They’ll tell you why every promising progressive is actually an imperialist, or why the DSA are actually corporate shills, why no one is actually a real leftist, but they never have someone they actually want to get elected. They just want to say “no,” or at best, they demand, “next,” without doing any work to find that next person.

Do you mean DS9? I’m pretty sure Voyager had regular shuttles and the Delta Flyer.

This car is dressed like it’s got a sitcom on UPN.

LOL, I didn’t even notice I got downvoted. I’m surprised, “Biden downplaying inflation cost him/Harris support,” ie still controversial with anyone in 2026. Even the establishment Dem cheerleader pundits seem to have accepted that it was a blunder.

So, Biden’s 2024 strategy. Looking forward to seeing that play out in the midterms.

Well, we could start sending him some red meat gift baskets, but it might get a little pricey.

Fetterman has certainly been acting more erratic since his stroke, but he actually wasn’t as progressive as people wanted to believe. He was always a hard-core Israel supporter, and he once held a black jogger at gunpoint because he saw a black man running and assumed he committed a crime.

Also, there is nothing the voters can do to remove a sitting Senator. The only way for him to be removed is for two-thirds of the Senate to expel him, which isn’t going to happen. Depending on Pennsylvania’s laws, either the Governor would appoint a Senator until the next election, which the Republicans wouldn’t support because they like Fetterman fucking over the Democrats, or Pennsylvania would have to hold a special election, which the Democrats wouldn’t like because it would leave them short a vote for weeks (maybe months), and an unreliable vote is better than no vote. Either way, you’re not going to find 67 Senators willing to expel him.

You know, Fetterman has talked openly about his struggles with suicidal ideation. Just saying, with the right letter campaign, we might be able to solve this one.

In fairness to Newsweek, based on the sentence before this, I think they mean, “many in the party establishment,” not, “many people in general.”

She brings significant energy to the primary among younger voters, but some in the Democratic Party establishment believe her progressive policies could alienate swing voters in the general election. Many believe Harris lost in 2024…

Yeah, they learned that capitulation isn’t profitable when they fired Jimmy Kimmel and everyone canceled their Disney+ subscription. From then on, they decided to stand up for free speech until their dying breath (or until the cost/benefit shifts and the harassment from the FCC costs them more than the blowback from collaborating with the regime).

“Here’s a graph that shows that, on average, real wages have gone up more than inflation!”

“Well my wages haven’t gone up, and now I can’t afford groceries.”

“Did you even look at the graph?”

We’ll see. The only cure foe scapegoating, far-right populism is genuine economic populism. I’m optimistic that, if we excise enough of the third-way rot from the party, the remaining Democratic hacks will see which way the wind is blowing and fall in line behind an actual progressive vision.

A) This person is very clearly not saying they are the same, and even provided you a visual guide explaining the difference.

B) “Fixing the economy,” always means stabilizing the stock market and lowering the deficit, but never improving the material conditions of the working class. Obama stabilized the stock market by bailing out the banks who created the financial crisis, not the homeowners facing foreclosure. Biden curbed inflation with supply-side measures instead of price control. Even Clinton responded to the H.W. Bush recession by gutting welfare and deregulating Wall Street (hell, repealing Glass-Steagall is one of the main reasons we got the financial crisis in the first place).

The Democratic Socialists are fielding a lot of viable challenges against Democrats this year, both in open seats and against incumbents. Mamdani is the very famous example, but there were a lot of DSA victories in city council races across the country, and there’s also a primary challenge for Rep. Richie Torres.

He’s not DSA affiliated, but Graham Platner just pushed centrist Janet Mills out of the Democratic primary race, allowing him to challenge Republican Susan Collins. Progressive Analilia Mejia also defeated AIPAC centrist Tom Malinowski in her primary and went on to win the special election to represent New Jersey’s 11th district. It’s still early, but this is could be a real reckoning for the centrist liberals that have ruled the party for the last 3 decades.