Salon: “Vote blue no matter who,” unless it’s Mamdani?

[Along Came Jones]

. . . the reception of Mamdani by establishment Democrats has inflamed a feeling among progressives that has been growing for years: the party’s liberal base is expected to vote for any Democratic candidate, no matter how conservative, while conservative and moderate Democrats get to pick and choose when they support their party’s nominee.

Faiz Shakir, a former senior advisor to Sen. Bernie Sanders, told Salon that when it comes time for the party to rally around their nominee, it’s not a two-way street.

“It’s not only not a two-way street,” Shakir said. “More problematically, it’s telling the new voters that have come into the Democratic primary process that ‘We don’t like your views, we don’t like you voting in the Democratic primary.’”

Shakir, who founded the non-profit news organization A More Perfect Union in 2021, added that the rejection of Mamdani speaks to a bigger issue in the party, which is that leadership cares more about maintaining the rules and power structure in the party than they do about expanding the party’s base of support.-- “Vote blue no matter who,” unless it’s Mamdani? Russell Payne, Salon via MSN, 8/2/2025

Why should the Democratic Party accept and support Democratic socialist candidates simply to expand their base? Kinda like inviting the foxes into the chicken coop, isn't it? What are the differences between a Democrat and a Democratic socialist?

 

[Bok Tuklo]

That is because the Democratic Party is not a leftist party. It hasn't been since at least the 90's.

NAFTA drove the last stake in the heart of what was left of the Left in the Democratic Party.

 

[StillBallin75]

Lol keep electing establishment losers who have no principles and stand for nothing and see where that goes.

Actually, watch Krystal Ball's interview if Elissa Slotkin on Breaking Points to see how not up to the moment establishment Democrats are.

Foxes in the henhouse? Zohran is literally showing the Party the way forward lol.

Or just keep nominating candidates whose electoral strategy is to shift rightwards, befriend the Cheneys, say nice things about Ronald Reagan, talk about how much they love being cops and CIA officers, talk about how they'll build a bigger wall than Donald, and see where that ****ing takes you.

People are desperate for populist candidates. You keep nominating normie neoliberal establishment centrist losers instead of populist left candidates, then the electorate will get their dose of "populism" from the right.

 

[Along Came Jones]

Lol keep electing establishment losers who have no principles and stand for nothing and see where that goes.

Actually, watch Krystal Ball's interview if Elissa Slotkin on Breaking Points to see how not up to the moment establishment Democrats are.

Foxes in the henhouse? Zohran is literally showing the Party the way forward lol.

Or just keep nominating candidates whose electoral strategy is to shift rightwards, befriend the Cheneys, say nice things about Ronald Reagan, talk about how much they love being cops and CIA officers, talk about how they'll build a bigger wall than Donald, and see where that ****ing takes you.

People are desperate for populist candidates. You keep nominating normie neoliberal establishment centrist losers instead of populist left candidates, then the electorate will get their dose of "populism" from the right.

Re: Foxes in the henhouse? Zohran is literally showing the Party the way forward lol.

The way forward being . . . officially becoming the Democratic Socialist Party? What do Democratic socialists advocate with respect to changing the structure of our economy?

 

[bomberfox]

The thing that feels like the biggest betrayal is the party is funding campaigns for fascist goons. Its unconscionable especially today.

 

[j brown's body]

The complaint, and its a valid one, is that the party expects it's progressives to hold their noses and vote for the centrist, while there is no expectation that centrists vote for the progressive.

 

[aociswundumho]

What are the differences between a Democrat and a Democratic socialist?

Democrats believe capitalism needs to be controlled by politicians via regulation. Democratic socialists believe capitalism needs to be taken out back and shot.

 

[What if...?]

Democrats believe capitalism needs to be controlled by politicians via regulation. Democratic socialists believe capitalism needs to be taken out back and shot.

That simply isn’t the case.

I know why your media tells you that though.

They don’t throw out their rich folks.

They just don’t bend everybody else over for them.

It’s the “society” root of the word socialism. The society takes precedence over capital. That it.

They don’t shift the tax burden onto the greater population. They use tax money for everybody and not just those who make campaign contributions.

All of these things are popular where they are in place. Their people don’t want our model.

 

[aociswundumho]

That simply isn’t the case.

You think democratic socialists support capitalism?

 

[ElChupacabra]

Re: Foxes in the henhouse? Zohran is literally showing the Party the way forward lol.

The way forward being . . . officially becoming the Democratic Socialist Party? What do Democratic socialists advocate with respect to changing the structure of our economy?

It may not matter given the same choice right leaning folks made with Trump. What may matter more is the promise of something.

 

[aociswundumho]

Why should the Democratic Party accept and support Democratic socialist candidates simply to expand their base?

They can't because they'll lose moderate and independent voters.

 

[Helix]

They'd better not veer right and take positions that I can't support. I'm already compromising to vote against fascism.

 

[j brown's body]

Democrats believe capitalism needs to be controlled by politicians via regulation. Democratic socialists believe capitalism needs to be taken out back and shot.

Are tariffs a form of regulation?

 

[aociswundumho]

Are tariffs a form of regulation?

Yes, and they are a form of central planning.

 

[j brown's body]

Yes, and they are a form of central planning.

Because a Republican is implementing them, maybe you meant to say that both Democrats and Republicans support regulating the economy?

 

[Gozaburo]

You think democratic socialists support capitalism?

Mamdani is literally a yuppy liberal capitalist who (admittedly ignorantly) thinks the Nordic model can be seamlessly applied to an American city, state, or even the country.

He isn't a socialist, communist, or radical. In many ways, he's still an uninspired, ineffective shitlib that remains trapped in a highly ideological cold war dialectic that stopped being relevant 40 years ago, much like yourself.

 

[aociswundumho]

Mamdani is literally a yuppy liberal capitalist

Yuppie stands for young urban professional. Mamdani has never had a real job, and he's an active member of the dsa, which destroys the capitalist claim.

Pro-tip: learn what words mean first before using them in a sentence.

who (admittedly ignorantly) thinks the Nordic model can be seamlessly applied to an American city, state, or even the country.

Let's see some evidence supporting this claim. I just searched and didn't find anything.

 

[j brown's body]

They can't because they'll lose moderate and independent voters.

That's who they have been focusing on and their approval rating is historically low and lack of party turnout cost them the last election.

While the Dems have focused on these voters, in large part, because they tend to turn out, Mandami won by focusing in voters who stay home. For the Dems, they are more likely to be more progressive. But in general, they are people who have given up. By getting out and listening to voters, he grabbed these voters and won handily.

 

[aociswundumho]

That's who they have been focusing on and their approval rating is historically low and lack of party turnout cost them the last election.

While the Dems have focused on these voters, in large part, because they tend to turn out, Mandami won by focusing in voters who stay home. For the Dems, they are more likely to be more progressive. But in general, they are people who have given up. By getting out and listening to voters, he grabbed these voters and won handily.

You can't extrapolate what happened in nyc to the rest of the country. Politics is a bell curve, with people like me on one end, and communists at the other. All the meat's in the moderate middle, and you can't win without it.

 

[Along Came Jones]

It may not matter given the same choice right leaning folks made with Trump. What may matter more is the promise of something.

I'd be interested in reading your thoughts after reading this longish quote from the DSA website. For me of little familiarity it focuses on "the promise of something."

The far more uncomfortable truth is that democracy in the United States – to the extent it has ever existed – has had the seeds of its destruction sown from the outset. The problem is deeper than any particular person or institution; in fact, our very concept of “government” is deeply flawed. Since our original Independence Day, there has been a constant, irreconcilable tension between our dream of political democracy and our reality of economic totalitarianism, with slavery as the most egregious example. The fact remains that capitalism begets irrational concentrations of wealth and power that are ultimately incompatible with democracy of any kind. Resolving this contradiction is going to take more than reforming this or that law or voting someone out of office. It’s going to require a thoroughgoing transformation of the basic institutions of our society, and a spirited rethinking of our core ideas around the meaning of government and freedom.

[. . .]

It’s hard to say exactly what a democratic socialist experiment in the 21st century will look like, but we’re not starting from scratch. One thing is certain, the experiments of 20th century socialists with fully planned economies were largely failures, and do not bear repeating. Economic planning was only ever a means to an end, and the end itself – a democratized economy that systematically encourages human flourishing rather than suffering – is much more important than any individual mechanism that gets us there. The Nordic model of social democracy is promising, but not without severe limitations of its own.

Some industries – healthcare, energy, much of the transportation sector – will have to be nationalized, and Marxist sociologist Vivek Chibber has estimated that as much as half the economy could be brought under effective state ownership. For the other half of the economy we’ll have to experiment with other methods of democratic control, such as worker-owned cooperatives, small-scale private firms with labor representation in management, social wealth funds and universal capital ownership, public investment banks and so on. This spirit of experimentation isn’t something we should be afraid of today. The United States was founded on a radical experiment in government the world had never seen. There’s no reason we can’t be equally bold in building a new kind of democratic economy as well. That same spirit of experimentation should guide us now. -- We Need Economic Democracy to Save the American Experiment, Taylor Clark, Democratic Left (dsausa.org), 7/4/2025

 

[TheDoctorWasIn]

You can't extrapolate what happened in nyc to the rest of the country. Politics is a bell curve, with people like me on one end, and communists at the other. All the meat's in the moderate middle, and you can't win without it.

This isn't how politics works. The "moderate middle" has always been a myth.

What we have is this country is a "middle" that doesn't really follow politics.

 

[TheDoctorWasIn]

Yuppie stands for young urban professional. Mamdani has never had a real job, and he's an active member of the dsa, which destroys the capitalist claim.

What makes a job a "real" job?

I know you guys really want the word "socialist" to sound as bad as "fascist," but that hasn't been true since the days of the Red Scare.

People support Mamdani because of what he says and what he's proposed, not because of the clubs he's a member of.

 

[j brown's body]

I'd be interested in reading your thoughts after reading this longish quote from the DSA website. For me of little familiarity it focuses on "the promise of something."

The far more uncomfortable truth is that democracy in the United States – to the extent it has ever existed – has had the seeds of its destruction sown from the outset. The problem is deeper than any particular person or institution; in fact, our very concept of “government” is deeply flawed. Since our original Independence Day, there has been a constant, irreconcilable tension between our dream of political democracy and our reality of economic totalitarianism, with slavery as the most egregious example. The fact remains that capitalism begets irrational concentrations of wealth and power that are ultimately incompatible with democracy of any kind. Resolving this contradiction is going to take more than reforming this or that law or voting someone out of office. It’s going to require a thoroughgoing transformation of the basic institutions of our society, and a spirited rethinking of our core ideas around the meaning of government and freedom.

[. . .]

It’s hard to say exactly what a democratic socialist experiment in the 21st century will look like, but we’re not starting from scratch. One thing is certain, the experiments of 20th century socialists with fully planned economies were largely failures, and do not bear repeating. Economic planning was only ever a means to an end, and the end itself – a democratized economy that systematically encourages human flourishing rather than suffering – is much more important than any individual mechanism that gets us there. The Nordic model of social democracy is promising, but not without severe limitations of its own.

Some industries – healthcare, energy, much of the transportation sector – will have to be nationalized, and Marxist sociologist Vivek Chibber has estimated that as much as half the economy could be brought under effective state ownership. For the other half of the economy we’ll have to experiment with other methods of democratic control, such as worker-owned cooperatives, small-scale private firms with labor representation in management, social wealth funds and universal capital ownership, public investment banks and so on. This spirit of experimentation isn’t something we should be afraid of today. The United States was founded on a radical experiment in government the world had never seen. There’s no reason we can’t be equally bold in building a new kind of democratic economy as well. That same spirit of experimentation should guide us now. -- We Need Economic Democracy to Save the American Experiment, Taylor Clark, Democratic Left (dsausa.org), 7/4/2025

And now we are watching the economy, education, and just about everything else, indeed, government itself, brought under the control of one man,

 

[Along Came Jones]

And now we are watching the economy, education, and just about everything else, indeed, government itself, brought under the control of one man,

Does not relate to the excerpted quote I provided. Not interested in making this thread about that "one man." Taylor Clark, the article author, would express the same beliefs no matter who occupied the presidency. Would be interested in your thoughts concerning the compatibility of the Democratic Party with the probable Democratic socialist goal of restructuring our economic system.

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

What are the differences between a Democrat and a Democratic socialist?

Well first of all, I'm going to state, as I always have, that Bernie is not a Democratic Socialist even though he insists he is, and neither is Mamdani, even though he is hoisting that flag, too.
Bernie was a DemSoc back when he was the Mayor of Burlington VT but he became a Social Democrat as soon as he set foot on Capitol Hill.
No, not by the act of climbing the steps, by the fact that he either authored or helped on bunches of capitalist legislation over the last twenty plus years, and that is why the Democratic Socialists of America yawned in 2016 when he announced his candidacy.

"Not a real socialist", they said.

Anyway, Sanders and Mamdani are Social Democrats as evidenced by their positions on market economics, no matter what they say.
And the difference is, FDR was a Social Democrat, he had no problem with supporting capitalism provided the more predatory aspects of it did not do excessive harm to
the poor and working class. And like Roosevelt, both Sanders and Mamdani want increased worker protections, boosts to wages, and a robust social contract, but neither of them celebrate the end of capitalism
and neither of them run around quoting Marx.

A Democratic Socialist, on the other hand, does whatever they can to bring about the end of capitalism. A DemSoc is rooted in the idea of replacing capitalism WITH socialism.
I simply don't listen to what they say, I watch what they do.