The problem with the DNC is that it is dominated by Boomer geezers - says a Boomer geezer. When David Hogg promoted the idea of forcing retirements by primarying out-of-touch geezers, the DNC expelled him in outrage. Then they went ahead and started primarying out-of-touch geezers (alas, with only partial success). My point is that both parties are out of touch and lack a plan.
Thom's suggestion that we return to the halcyon days of FDR sounds great. However, thanks to Citizens United, voters have no effective power besides whining. No billionaire wants a 75% income tax, and they will send their money to the party that opposes such a model. Let's face reality, Boomers are quite comfortable in their throne rooms doing nothing. That does give Democrats an edge for now, but only a well-pensioned fool would think that restoring our government after DOGE and Trump have taken a chainsaw to it will be easy.
Not prosecuting MAGA crooks and cronies is corruption as usual. Voters like me are fed up with over a century of that crap. People like Warren, Sanders, AOC, and a few other established liberal voices on The Hill know what to do. They just need the Democratic Party to support them by getting out of their way. We need more David Hoggs, not fewer. We need more Katie Porters who legislate with facts rather than self-interest.
America needs to get woke that we have alienated every single ally in the world. After tariffying the entire global market, you do not go back to normal just by saying "Sorree! My bad." America needs to earn its White Hat and restore democracy while promoting it globally. You do that by ending white-collar crime, and starting by draining the "real" Washington, DC swamp, while encouraging growth within the Deep State of career civil servants who know how to coordinate across agencies to smoothly implement new policies and practices - not fire and retire them.
I thought that "Gen Z" lost the 2004 election because they missed that we are a big tent party. At DNC they were in charge. IMHO they get younger every year and just as stubborn.
I wuz wrong the past several cycles when I thought we would be saved by the upcoming generation. I spent my time and money in organizations like Field Team 6 and other venues pursuing that concept. In every case, they failed expectations.
On the other hand, we wuz robbed in 2024 (and maybe 2016). IMHO we have/had a superior "message".
Democracy means we engage in a class war against the oppressor class instead of just accepting our fate as they would have it. Taking their money to shut up about class is political treason. Democrats have largely adopted this "cunning insider" strategy, and we have only suffered for it. It's sad that the popular and necessary course of action for Democrats is considered too extreme.
Well, people are starting to think extremely now. When someone tries to steal your wallet you break his arm - or you can just talk about how bad it was later. Take your pick.
Democrats have their eye on the same cash pot as the Republicans, the donor class.
It was to the donor class, that Lewis F Powell, wrote his infamous memo
I sussed out that there wasn't a dimes worth of difference twixt the parties as far back ass 1964, so stopped voting until 2016. I am again of the same mind, until there is a change in leadership, and the AOC's, Sanders, Hoggs take over.
I am fully aware, publicly fa rapart, but they slop at the same trough, and thus are committed to the same donor source.
ICE is running free, violating our rights, killing people, depriving people of due process, because Chuck Schumer caved and voted for the Budget that gave ICE #10 billion to rain hell on America and build concentration camps across the nation.
That budget made them the 5th largest army in the world, not bad enough As of early 2026, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has an unprecedented, massive funding surge, with a $75 billion supplementary injection available through 2029 on top of an approximate $10 billion base budget. This effectively gives the agency over $85 billion in available funding to expand detention capacity and enforcement operations
That would not have happened if Chuck Schumer had stood his ground, when the initial budget was being passed, but he folded and here we are.
Hakeem Jeffries major donor has been AIPAC, do yourself a favor, check Opensecrets.org and type in the name of any politician. and see who owns him
Politicians should wear jackets like NASCAR with the names of their sponsors.
Grandstanding in front of a mic is one thing politicians are great at.
I amnot impressed by words, I am impressed by actions.
So fucking what Daniel. Totally irrelevant. There are exceptions here and there like AOC and Sanders, but they are excluded and every effort made to ostracize them.
As usual, you can only post irrelevancies,perhaps he best you can do with thumb postingon your iPhone., that and copy and paste
Dems should be explaining accountability and talking about affordability solutions.
We definitely know that. The problem often is that people don't seem to understand Americans deserve better. Platner didn't come up with anything most of the politically educated are not thinking as well.
That platform CAN be done---it is BEING done in so many other nations. Keep teaching, friends. See you in the streets.
We need to restore our middle class and we need a bold playbook for 2029 that mirrors the 2025 Republican playbook. Who will put this playbook together? Then, what person can be our next FDR who has the courage to make it happen? After that, how can we hold our own Democratic Congress to the task of cooperating to achieve the implementation of the plan? We have two years to put this all together, and it starts with midterm elections in 2026. Will voters be able to get the message and take action? You are correct that we have the capacity to do it. I just hope we have the vision and the political will.
No one can argue with political genius. I fully concur with this analysis. Democrats must grow a spine and fight for what they believe in. However, I would go further or take a more direct route. I would challenge fundamentalism and fanaticism and take on the irrational and superstitious thinking behind the Republicans and reactionaries and the fascists. I prefer what Susan Jacoby suggested as the essential approach.
Jacoby noticed that we were at a crossroads in 2008 with her brilliant and incisive book, The Age of American Unreason”. She cites this quote from Jefferson at the beginning of her great book:
“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”
Here is a quote from her first chapter which sums up our morass perfectly:
“Unlike its predecessor in the twenties, the current anti-rationalist movement has been politicized from the bottom up and the top down, from school boards in small towns to the corridors of power in Washington. Bill Moyers, who has long been under attack from the religious and political right for the pro-science, pro-rationalist, and anti-fundamentalist content of his programs on public television, described the process in a scathing speech about the end-times scenario. “One of the biggest changes in my lifetime”, Moyers said, “is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seats of power in the Oval Office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theocracy hold a monopoly of power in Washington. Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a worldview despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. The offspring of ideology and theology are not always bad but they are always blind. And that is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts.” In the land of politicized anti-rationalism, facts are whatever folks choose to believe.”
If we will continue to let delusion pass for the cognitive state of half the population, we will never rid ourselves of this scourge for more than a short period. It is time to stop climbing up the down escalator. This will be the topic of a new Substack post in the very near future.
Tom i again fully agree with you. Our representatives need to be bad asses willing to fight corruption and go after these gangsters, oligarchs, con artists, grifters and mafia figures.We now have a wild west to conquer after all. Let’s draws our political map based on those heros of democracy that we can look up to. Democrats themselves need to get their ethics and morals straikght and stop feeding on the same trough as the fascists and Epsteinn class. By all means we need to replace all 6 traitors on the supreme cout - not just Thomaas.
As i have been saying for much of the last year stop talking and start doing. I fully support candidates like this.i support those who understand because thez have thought it out and have resolved to do somerjing about it.
If the Hungarians can do it so can we. If the Eucranians can fight real evil so can we. If we ere as polite as the Canadians we can also be as tough as the Canadians on the Rump. I know who I am voting for and why.
.... I show precisely how the $84 trillion inheritance lottery + loopholes like stepped-up basis and dynasty trusts now rig the game before birth. Dynastic wealth isn’t earned; it’s inherited privilege that kills mobility and democracy.
Here’s the fix: close the loopholes, restore real estate taxes, launch Baby Bonds. Real growth demands we tax unearned wealth, not protect it.
Curtis Yarvin, who begat Thiel, who begat Jeff Davis Vance, wants to [after AI unemploys the 99%] Yarvin wants to turn humans into bio-fuel to power muni-buses.
Graham Platner's campaign pledges sound great to me. Except for his calling for removal of Schumer. I agree with his tax the rich to rebuild the middle class theme. Chuck Schumer doesn't have a magic wand and I believe he has held the senate democrats together, no easy job. The rich should pay their fair share to pay for popular programs sounds like a good national strategy to me. However in my jaded view too many Americans care only about themselves and their money. Things such as racial equality, the constitution, the rule of law are blah, blah, meaningless to them. Vote for democrats and you will have more money should be the theme. Also to that effect a few nationwide ads on TV extolling that theme would be helpful. Monosyllables, large font, played during games.
Plattner's list could be, should be, much longer, and include things like overturning Citizens United and raising taxes on the billionaire class. And the Democratic Party should be working diligently behind the scenes to make these things happen "on day one," as someone famously said.
If there was any alternative to the Democrats, most of us would take it. The discouraging problems commenters note have been features of the Democratic Party for at least the past 40 or 50 years.
“Democrats need to fire their neoliberal advisors left over from the Clinton and Obama years, take a law-and-order posture against the corruption of Trump and his GOP lickspittles, and put forward FDR- and LBJ-like transformational programs to restore America’s middle class and our status as an example for the world.” Indeed. We also need to unflinchingly question the motives of elected Democrats who actively thwart, or compulsively distance themselves from, the Bernies/AOCs/Platners, etc. willing to take on the corruption, abuses, lies of the would-be autocrats. “Why are you standing in the way? Who is funding you? Why have you abandoned the New Deal? Why are you suppressing the 2024 autopsy? Why have you become a DINO? Why are you dragging your feet on obvious prosecutions? Why, why, why…?” Corporate Democrats and corporate media are getting us more of the same. We can’t afford it.
I couldn't agree more. I'm democrat and middle aged and I absolutely do not want status quo democratic candidates. I have worked on economic system change issues my entire adult life and I sense now more than ever before widespread recognition that the system itself is broken and must be redesigned. There's a reason people like Mamdani, AOC, and good ol' Bernie S are resonating with more and more of us. I listen to both left and right leaning media and I like it just fine when the rightwingers attack and mock the "radical" progressives. I say just let them keep telling their base we're nuts as we take over and bring real change.
You're supporting the guy with the Nazi tattoo? Seriously, Thom? If you like the message, couldn't you have chosen someone to showcase who stands for these principles who is not an antisemite?
The problem with the DNC is that it is dominated by Boomer geezers - says a Boomer geezer. When David Hogg promoted the idea of forcing retirements by primarying out-of-touch geezers, the DNC expelled him in outrage. Then they went ahead and started primarying out-of-touch geezers (alas, with only partial success). My point is that both parties are out of touch and lack a plan.
Thom's suggestion that we return to the halcyon days of FDR sounds great. However, thanks to Citizens United, voters have no effective power besides whining. No billionaire wants a 75% income tax, and they will send their money to the party that opposes such a model. Let's face reality, Boomers are quite comfortable in their throne rooms doing nothing. That does give Democrats an edge for now, but only a well-pensioned fool would think that restoring our government after DOGE and Trump have taken a chainsaw to it will be easy.
Not prosecuting MAGA crooks and cronies is corruption as usual. Voters like me are fed up with over a century of that crap. People like Warren, Sanders, AOC, and a few other established liberal voices on The Hill know what to do. They just need the Democratic Party to support them by getting out of their way. We need more David Hoggs, not fewer. We need more Katie Porters who legislate with facts rather than self-interest.
America needs to get woke that we have alienated every single ally in the world. After tariffying the entire global market, you do not go back to normal just by saying "Sorree! My bad." America needs to earn its White Hat and restore democracy while promoting it globally. You do that by ending white-collar crime, and starting by draining the "real" Washington, DC swamp, while encouraging growth within the Deep State of career civil servants who know how to coordinate across agencies to smoothly implement new policies and practices - not fire and retire them.
We need to be a big tent.
I thought that "Gen Z" lost the 2004 election because they missed that we are a big tent party. At DNC they were in charge. IMHO they get younger every year and just as stubborn.
I wuz wrong the past several cycles when I thought we would be saved by the upcoming generation. I spent my time and money in organizations like Field Team 6 and other venues pursuing that concept. In every case, they failed expectations.
On the other hand, we wuz robbed in 2024 (and maybe 2016). IMHO we have/had a superior "message".
Democracy means we engage in a class war against the oppressor class instead of just accepting our fate as they would have it. Taking their money to shut up about class is political treason. Democrats have largely adopted this "cunning insider" strategy, and we have only suffered for it. It's sad that the popular and necessary course of action for Democrats is considered too extreme.
Well, people are starting to think extremely now. When someone tries to steal your wallet you break his arm - or you can just talk about how bad it was later. Take your pick.
Actually we were born in compromise and respect minority rights, which were added to the Constitution in 1791 and 1870. .
Some of the most strident are converts. If we have an election, I want MAGAts to stay home.
Democrats have their eye on the same cash pot as the Republicans, the donor class.
It was to the donor class, that Lewis F Powell, wrote his infamous memo
I sussed out that there wasn't a dimes worth of difference twixt the parties as far back ass 1964, so stopped voting until 2016. I am again of the same mind, until there is a change in leadership, and the AOC's, Sanders, Hoggs take over.
Ummm, I think you need to read the news? Our two Parties, and their members, could not be farther apert today. Seriously.
I am fully aware, publicly fa rapart, but they slop at the same trough, and thus are committed to the same donor source.
ICE is running free, violating our rights, killing people, depriving people of due process, because Chuck Schumer caved and voted for the Budget that gave ICE #10 billion to rain hell on America and build concentration camps across the nation.
That budget made them the 5th largest army in the world, not bad enough As of early 2026, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has an unprecedented, massive funding surge, with a $75 billion supplementary injection available through 2029 on top of an approximate $10 billion base budget. This effectively gives the agency over $85 billion in available funding to expand detention capacity and enforcement operations
That would not have happened if Chuck Schumer had stood his ground, when the initial budget was being passed, but he folded and here we are.
Hakeem Jeffries major donor has been AIPAC, do yourself a favor, check Opensecrets.org and type in the name of any politician. and see who owns him
Politicians should wear jackets like NASCAR with the names of their sponsors.
Grandstanding in front of a mic is one thing politicians are great at.
I amnot impressed by words, I am impressed by actions.
Sez a guy who doesn't know a single canidate.
So fucking what Daniel. Totally irrelevant. There are exceptions here and there like AOC and Sanders, but they are excluded and every effort made to ostracize them.
As usual, you can only post irrelevancies,perhaps he best you can do with thumb postingon your iPhone., that and copy and paste
You don't even know what "relevant" means.
Another stupid response. Are you really a human or an AI troll?
Some people don't get out much.....
Dems should be explaining accountability and talking about affordability solutions.
We definitely know that. The problem often is that people don't seem to understand Americans deserve better. Platner didn't come up with anything most of the politically educated are not thinking as well.
That platform CAN be done---it is BEING done in so many other nations. Keep teaching, friends. See you in the streets.
Actually we do. https://blueprint.democrats.org/
BTW what about the tattoo?
He knows he made a mistake. People can grow.
And always have had most of those values---kinda my point. Just need to be as vocal as possible.
We need to restore our middle class and we need a bold playbook for 2029 that mirrors the 2025 Republican playbook. Who will put this playbook together? Then, what person can be our next FDR who has the courage to make it happen? After that, how can we hold our own Democratic Congress to the task of cooperating to achieve the implementation of the plan? We have two years to put this all together, and it starts with midterm elections in 2026. Will voters be able to get the message and take action? You are correct that we have the capacity to do it. I just hope we have the vision and the political will.
No one can argue with political genius. I fully concur with this analysis. Democrats must grow a spine and fight for what they believe in. However, I would go further or take a more direct route. I would challenge fundamentalism and fanaticism and take on the irrational and superstitious thinking behind the Republicans and reactionaries and the fascists. I prefer what Susan Jacoby suggested as the essential approach.
Jacoby noticed that we were at a crossroads in 2008 with her brilliant and incisive book, The Age of American Unreason”. She cites this quote from Jefferson at the beginning of her great book:
“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”
Here is a quote from her first chapter which sums up our morass perfectly:
“Unlike its predecessor in the twenties, the current anti-rationalist movement has been politicized from the bottom up and the top down, from school boards in small towns to the corridors of power in Washington. Bill Moyers, who has long been under attack from the religious and political right for the pro-science, pro-rationalist, and anti-fundamentalist content of his programs on public television, described the process in a scathing speech about the end-times scenario. “One of the biggest changes in my lifetime”, Moyers said, “is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seats of power in the Oval Office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theocracy hold a monopoly of power in Washington. Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a worldview despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. The offspring of ideology and theology are not always bad but they are always blind. And that is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts.” In the land of politicized anti-rationalism, facts are whatever folks choose to believe.”
If we will continue to let delusion pass for the cognitive state of half the population, we will never rid ourselves of this scourge for more than a short period. It is time to stop climbing up the down escalator. This will be the topic of a new Substack post in the very near future.
I will look for it.
Tom i again fully agree with you. Our representatives need to be bad asses willing to fight corruption and go after these gangsters, oligarchs, con artists, grifters and mafia figures.We now have a wild west to conquer after all. Let’s draws our political map based on those heros of democracy that we can look up to. Democrats themselves need to get their ethics and morals straikght and stop feeding on the same trough as the fascists and Epsteinn class. By all means we need to replace all 6 traitors on the supreme cout - not just Thomaas.
As i have been saying for much of the last year stop talking and start doing. I fully support candidates like this.i support those who understand because thez have thought it out and have resolved to do somerjing about it.
If the Hungarians can do it so can we. If the Eucranians can fight real evil so can we. If we ere as polite as the Canadians we can also be as tough as the Canadians on the Rump. I know who I am voting for and why.
In my piece, ‘Generational Wealth Inequality’ https://uncomfortable.rxansmithmedia.com/p/generational-wealth-inequality
.... I show precisely how the $84 trillion inheritance lottery + loopholes like stepped-up basis and dynasty trusts now rig the game before birth. Dynastic wealth isn’t earned; it’s inherited privilege that kills mobility and democracy.
Here’s the fix: close the loopholes, restore real estate taxes, launch Baby Bonds. Real growth demands we tax unearned wealth, not protect it.
Curtis Yarvin, who begat Thiel, who begat Jeff Davis Vance, wants to [after AI unemploys the 99%] Yarvin wants to turn humans into bio-fuel to power muni-buses.
He said this. Really.
So not voting for Ds is a vote for insanity.
#Draft all male Trumps.
Graham Platner's campaign pledges sound great to me. Except for his calling for removal of Schumer. I agree with his tax the rich to rebuild the middle class theme. Chuck Schumer doesn't have a magic wand and I believe he has held the senate democrats together, no easy job. The rich should pay their fair share to pay for popular programs sounds like a good national strategy to me. However in my jaded view too many Americans care only about themselves and their money. Things such as racial equality, the constitution, the rule of law are blah, blah, meaningless to them. Vote for democrats and you will have more money should be the theme. Also to that effect a few nationwide ads on TV extolling that theme would be helpful. Monosyllables, large font, played during games.
Plattner's list could be, should be, much longer, and include things like overturning Citizens United and raising taxes on the billionaire class. And the Democratic Party should be working diligently behind the scenes to make these things happen "on day one," as someone famously said.
If there was any alternative to the Democrats, most of us would take it. The discouraging problems commenters note have been features of the Democratic Party for at least the past 40 or 50 years.
“Democrats need to fire their neoliberal advisors left over from the Clinton and Obama years, take a law-and-order posture against the corruption of Trump and his GOP lickspittles, and put forward FDR- and LBJ-like transformational programs to restore America’s middle class and our status as an example for the world.” Indeed. We also need to unflinchingly question the motives of elected Democrats who actively thwart, or compulsively distance themselves from, the Bernies/AOCs/Platners, etc. willing to take on the corruption, abuses, lies of the would-be autocrats. “Why are you standing in the way? Who is funding you? Why have you abandoned the New Deal? Why are you suppressing the 2024 autopsy? Why have you become a DINO? Why are you dragging your feet on obvious prosecutions? Why, why, why…?” Corporate Democrats and corporate media are getting us more of the same. We can’t afford it.
I couldn't agree more. I'm democrat and middle aged and I absolutely do not want status quo democratic candidates. I have worked on economic system change issues my entire adult life and I sense now more than ever before widespread recognition that the system itself is broken and must be redesigned. There's a reason people like Mamdani, AOC, and good ol' Bernie S are resonating with more and more of us. I listen to both left and right leaning media and I like it just fine when the rightwingers attack and mock the "radical" progressives. I say just let them keep telling their base we're nuts as we take over and bring real change.
You're supporting the guy with the Nazi tattoo? Seriously, Thom? If you like the message, couldn't you have chosen someone to showcase who stands for these principles who is not an antisemite?