Expert says Dems have "once-in-a-generation" chance to flip hundreds of seats across the nation - LGBTQ Nation
10 months ago by Tony Bark to c/politics
Sweeping Democratic victories in off-year elections seem to be foreshadowing a very good midterms for the party, and one expert believes it’s even bigger than that.
“This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to fundamentally transform legislative power,” Heather Williams, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC), which focuses on electing Democrats to statehouses, told Mother Jones.
I’ve heard that the guy leading the Democratic Party right now has been pushing for a 50 state approach as well as pushing for all levels of government, even state legislatures. Putting more money into state parties as well. Seems like the right approach at least.
That is certainly a better start than years past where they simply ignored everything except top level offices. Including their voters.
But it still won't help anything if they try to run the most focused group tested, middle-of-the-road, oligarch approved, bland candidates. Mamdani and others are showing another path. But so far, local and national Democrats have always seemed to want to fight their kind.
if they try to run the most focused group tested, middle-of-the-road, oligarch approved, bland candidates. Mamdani and others are showing another path.
We should not care who they try to run, and instead show up in the primaries to dictate to them who we choose.
Wether we should or shouldn't doesn't matter since the last election showed people will either stay home or defect if Dems run another Corpo shilling milquetoast do nothing right of center candidate.
I'll still vote for them just to spite the Fascist Right Cunts but I certainly won't like it and I will certainly bitch about it.
I agree. Though one addendum. showing up in the primaries is good, but it's not going to solve bad candidates. We need to start running ourselves. Rebuilding state parties ourselves. And telling the disastrous national party to get fucked.
That sort of concentrated power always results in conceitedness and corruption.
I think it’s important to remember that different parts of the country require different types of candidates. Dems flipped out about Manchin, but he was the only Democrats would get elected in the region.
We didn’t exactly prep anyone to replace him either.
We knew for years Manchin would eventually leave, and we opted to just give up the seat more or less rather than setting up another Democrat like him or even one that could sway West Virginian voters like Bernie managed to do in 2025!
We could 100% run progressives in rural Red states and win. They just need to paint a vision of hope for these people and give them a common person making their problems worse, the billionaires and big corporations.
Why are you acting like this wasn't a race between democrats though? The Republican canidate and any other 3rd party canidates had no chance.
In the primary Mamdani beat all the other democrats. Then for the general the run of the mill corporate democrat ran independent and still lost.
It's essentially a race showing us the type of democrats proffered by democratic voters
Well, yeah, since the Democrat he beat in the primary ran against him as an independent in the general election. So of course that cut his margin of victory.
Only if progressives throw their hats into the primaries in 2026.
I've seen a disturbing lack of progressives readying up to kick out establishment dems, just like every year.
MAGA took over the republicans without bitching that it was hopeless.
MAGA did not try to upend the pro-buisness nature of the Republican party. MAGA and old school republicans serve the same masters.
Progressive reformers have a much steeper hill to climb, as it would require a near-total destruction of the Democratic Party status quo in order to effect meaningful change.
Both D and R politicians are deeply addicted to dark money donations; we have legalized bribery and corruption. Ending this addiction, even in one party, is not a small, simple act- it is a revolution.
A revolution sounds pretty damn good right about now.
Yep. All it ever is is excuses.
If there's a way, no matter how small, for the Dems to squander this opportunity and wrestle defeat from the jaws of victory, they will leave no bland page of the most moderate and uninspiring speech unread to a near empty chamber.
My thoughts exactly. I can't wait to see the controlled opposition "accidentally" fumble a guaranteed win.
Schumer's and Jefferies are currently working directly against Democrats abilities to storm into a majority. If you only have the ability to lead in fair weather and favorable winds, you don't have the ability to lead.
These two in particular are doing material damage to Democrats abilities to barnstormer November.
And they'll bust it with their tried and tested method for failure: trying to court the right by moving right and abandoning leftist causes.
abandoning leftist causes
Actively opposing leftist causes
Dems put more effort into opposing Mamdani than they did into prosecuting Trump over J6 💀
That happened in Canada's federal election. Our Conservative party was acting like Trumpists, so people flocked to the Liberal party, our left-ish parties collapsed, and the Liberals took a big step right.
Just like the labour party in the UK
I gotta ask, like what's the plan even if there is a big blue wave? The current dream scenario it seems is just a centre-right single party state where the Republicans poof into thin air and leave just the Democrats. Your guys' country needs more parties
The last time the Democrats won control of Congress, they tried to pass a very large electoral reform law.
This bill bans partisan gerrymandering, requires Congressional constituency lines to be drawn by independent boundary commissions, introduces new limits on campaign finance, requires polls to be open for at least two weeks, introduces an automatic voter registration scheme, makes the final day of voting a federal holiday, expands postal voting, makes obstructing voter registration a federal crime, restores voting rights to felons when they leave prison, bans lying to voters about when or where to vote, introduces public financing of elections, limits the amount of money that political parties can spend on an election, requires candidates for president or vice-president to disclose their tax returns, imposes a code of ethics on the Supreme Court, and bans companies from making big donations to inaugural committees.
This bill did not pass because the Senate was evenly divided and the Democrats suffered a backbench rebellion from two "centrist" senators.
As is tradition.
This bill did not pass because the Senate was evenly divided and the Democrats suffered a backbench rebellion from two “centrist” senators.
There's a reasonable suspicion the Democrats only advance these bills proposing real change when they already know they have those two "rebels" lined up to block it. That way they keep the voters coming back for another try, while looking after the interests of those who pay them.
Democrats are an uncertainty while Republicans are a certainty to vote against this kind of reform. To me the solution is clear, remove the certainty, get so many DNC in there that expulsion becomes viable without handing the reigns over to Rs.
I'm pretty sure if that were the case then someone would have blown the whistle on this several years ago. These people employ staffers, many of whom are very ideologically dedicated to the progressive cause, and would not hesitate to become a person familiar with the manner who agreed to an interview on condition of anonymity. In fact, this is probably where 90% of Congress leaks come from.
The plan is to create a de facto one-party state where Republicans consistently get around 20-30% of the vote.
To stay in power, the ruling party needs the opposition to be too weak to attempt a takeover, but too strong to be wiped out. By doing this, the "I'm not [opposition]" can remain the default messaging.
Historically, when a party is defeated electorally over and over again, its members either form a new party or they rebel against leadership and the party lurches left or right in the direction of the voters. This happened to the Republican Party after they lost five presidential elections in a row (four of which were won by Franklin Roosevelt). The next Republican president in office was Dwight Eisenhower, who by today's standards would be a moderate liberal.
You can also see it happen in other countries. After being stuck on the left side of the room for 14 years the British Labour Party elected a... moderate conservative as leader and then subsequently won the next election.
Generally speaking, when a party keeps losing elections over and over again, picking a more extreme candidate is usually catastrophic to their electoral chances—see what happened in Canada and Australia.
Before anyone comments with objections or observations of this dynamic in modern American politics, do note that no party has lost 3 elections in a row in five decades.
Your guys’ country needs more parties
We need significant changes to our voting systems to make a multi-party system viable. As it is stands now, it basically devolves into a 2-party system because a 3rd party will just end up dividing the votes of one side and helping the other end.
There are several voting schemes that would make more parties viable. Unfortunately, it's a catch-22 because the people who can enact such a change are disincentivized from doing so because they benefit from the current paradigm.
/I am using "multi" here to mean more than 2
Because the current system is setup to exclude third party voters, mathematically the FPTP system will result in a two party duopoly. And we've seen time and time again that the spoiler effect reduces votes to the party more similar to the third party.
So yeah, unless you get all the people to dedicate to a third party blowout, it is a waste. If an incumbent president didn't have enough influence to break the duopoly by going third party, do you really think it's ever going to happen? Particularly without a huge movement of said third party?
Pragmatically speaking, voting third party only serves to help the people you disagree with more.
The same argument applies in every other voting system and that is simply not how it works. If you never vote what you actually want you will never get what you actually want. Saying all need to change at once is nonsense, a gradual shift is more than enough. But people argue exactly like that and so never vote what they want, that is the core issue. Other voting systems still see few % parties get nothing and the argument people use to not vote them is exactly the same. The has to be some cutoff below which you get nothing and there is no way to prevent that in a real system with integer numbers.
Yep. Every voting system has anomalies that can be gamed. FPTP leads to a 2-party equilibrium. Most proportional-representation systems lead to coalition governments, and such systems give disproportionate power to small centrist parties needed by a coalition in order to form a majority.
What tha means is that under PR, people like Manchin and Schumer would be included in every coalition government. Just what we need: more power to unprincipled opportunists.
The same argument applies in every other voting system
It literally does not, there are ranked voting and instant runoff systems where it doesn't apply.
Vote for me. My campaign slogan is "Bacon".
No further questions please! Elect me! Bacon.
Even if this were true--which I am skeptical that it is--we cannot wrest our republic from the brink by winning every election by wide margins. If we can't find a way to reconcile the degree to which we can't agree on a basic set of facts and institute government that is responsive to the needs of the people, then the seemingly impending authoritarian age will come to pass.
I'll believe nothing until I see it. I'll be voting Democrat.
Also be on the lookout for Republicans in sheep's clothes running for local elections. You can easily tell them apart but I won't say how. Just read the pamphlet or if they fucked up and you didn't get one go to the website and read about the candidates. For local I've been picking people by their background. For example for superintendent for the school district pick a teacher. For fire fighters pick a firefighter. For other things I've picked engineers and science background candidates. We gotta get rid of the retarded politicians and the carrier politicians that just waste our tax money on defense and military stuff.
Even if they win every election they will find a reason not to do anything
Probably, my questions would pertian to what wealth could you get a majority of the population to agree on taxing, and how much.
It's easy to say "I think we should put in wealth taxes" it's hard to get people to agree that above $x dollars and for y% is what would be needed. Many Democrats would agree on wealth tax of 10% over $300 million. A lot of progressives would say that is far to little and to high starting entry, but if you shift those numbers lower/higher you would lose chunks of the population agreeing, and ultimately destroy the possibility of it being started. Which to be honest getting it instituted first, then modifying it seems like the easier thing to do, than launch i high enough tax to fix the issues up front. You'll lose all the corporate democracts, and essentially have 25% voting for it at that point.. making it a dead end
Hmmm, I wonder if Trump will use executive orders to circumvent congress completely, and the Supremes will back him up per Bezos instructions?
Nah, that's crazy, I'm just paranoid.
p.s. Senate will continue ignoring actual law and insist on following Senate rules (not law; can be changed at any time with simple majority vote) per cloture to avoid the "filibuster"; this blatantly unconstitutional "rule" was magically created to prevent another New Deal
Executive orders cannot legally contradict the existing laws. Trump uses them to pretend he rules by decree, but most of the time, everyone just shrugs their shoulders and says "yeah, whatever, Cheetoh-pedo." And when EOs have gone to court, they've been declared null and void.
Also, filibusters have been uses as long as the Republic has existed, and the modern cloture rule dates back to around the end of WW1, so it was not put in to prevent the New Deal.
Correction, the current "filibuster" rule (not law) is no longer a filibuster, they just "call" it a filibuster, but don't actually perform it. So, it's not even a filibuster as it was known for many decades, but an out-in-the-open parlor trick.
Cloture rules (not law) were changed after the ND, in 1975, look it up. Your statement that "the modern cloture rule dates back to the end of WW1" is blatantly false, per the senate. I think that they know their own rules pretty well.
They follow the cloture rule when they really don't want to pass something, which is most of the time. See the first minimum wage vote under Biden for example, oops, we need 60 votes! Coincidentally, the New Deal would not have passed, as they only had 59 votes.
If they want to pass a law for real, they then retract their rule (not law), and then they only need a simple majority. They have done this many times, around 200 last time I checked.
If Biden and friends had wanted to actually raise minimum wage, they would have made an exception to their senate cloture rules (not law), and they would have only needed a simple majority to pass it (they could have done this with Harris being the deciding vote).
They did not.
This is the chance for Dems to once again wrestle defeat from the jaws of victory.
We need a better party. Dems are centrists; we need a progressive. One who won't olive branch the traitor party.
however, the government favors just the republicans and the democrats. if the us went for a parliamentary system (with an executive president, rather than a president and a prime minister), we would have a lot more options, and the progressives would win a bit more. seriously!
We need less Republicans, if you've got an actual plan to do that then great, if you don't then step out of the way and let us elect the progressive DNC representatives.
Kamala wants to run again.
Newsom sees himself as a frontrunner.
Mamdami isn't recognized by Dems and they can't figure out why he won.
The Democrats continued to drop their balls when they folded after the gov strike.
Yeah we're looking at another shit year. They'll just fund ICE less now.
Clinton/Harris 2028
(/s)
Yeah, I hope Clinton/Harris was snark.
Someone needs to get Jeffries out of there before he finds new ways to score own goals.
Yeah, when the Midterms are over, it will be time to get rid of Jeffries and Schmuck Schumer. If the Dems take one or both Houses, then it's time to go to war, and these dipshits aren't in the game. They let the four years of the Biden administration go by without firing a shot, and that can't happen again.
No kidding, if the next Dem administration is just a repeat of the Biden administration, instead of a full-blown crushing and purging of MAGA, and MAGA ends up back in power, I'm leaving. Not kidding. I don't see the point of staying here, caring, fighting, protesting, writing, etc., if the people we appoint to fight for us simply refuse to do it.
I'll just retire to an island or beach somewhere, and watch America burn down from a distance. My family is already talking about it, and comparing options.
Woah, expecting representation in exchange for your vote? Sorry buddy, this purity test is unreasonable. Dont you know that governing is hard? Of course you dont because youre not in the big club.
Now suck on nanci Pelosi's toes with the biggest grin you can muster or else you will be labeled a Russian bot by our finest record correctors.
We are literally surrounded by ignorant Nazis raging for the machine who voted for a pedofile con man 3 times….don’t hold your breath
Somewhat..
This would require a complete shift change in leadership long before the races begins. Democratic leadership is still polling at historic lows and they're dragging the part down with them. A bluenami has already been knee capped by Scumers and Jefferies disgusting weakness, cuckolded by both power and influence.
Absolutely the conditions are ripe. but it requires excellent communication, strategy, a bold vision for the fight that can actually galvanized the base that Democrats have worked so hard to erode.
Too bad the leadership are feckless losers.
every other year we got once in a generation elections
I'm sure they'll snatch defeat from the jaws of victory again, or squander the opportunity to make real gains with any win.
So, you guys remember when we had the “once-in-a-generation” chance to stand in the way of a fascist Hitler-wannabe criminal of a dictator?
We had one party that actually wanted this, another that couldn’t be bothered to do enough to distance themselves from it- and an unbelievable ninety one million dipshits that were fine with allowing either to dictate the results.
Never underestimate an American’s penchant for exerting less than the bare minimum of effort- even when it’s in their own best interest to do so.
This is better than my take. Have an upvote!
It’s not about ticking boxes though. It’s recognizing that just sitting on your hands and doing nothing for people other than saying “well at least we aren’t the Republicans!” and not fighting tooth and nail for important things (like the PRO Act, voting reform, minimum wage increases, etc) just means people are gonna walk away and try voting for the other team next cycle because at least they’re promising something.
The donors will never allow the democratic party to change. That's why its all on the voters to change what they are asking for to what the donors desire.
Fascism has never been overthrown by limp oppoisition parties suddenly finding a spine. It's either war, revolution or (in a few odd cases) a coup, such as the one carried out by Spain's otherwise useless and corrupt king when Franco bit the dust.
Time to have a bad candidate in the "once in a life time" election from the Dems again so Trump gets his illegal 3rd term. Can't have a popular candidate, they might raise taxes on the rich and lower them on the poor.
@But_my_mom_says_im_cool@lemmy.world re: https://lemmy.world/comment/20954304
Do all the comments in this thread sound like Russian propaganda too? Or are there perhaps valid criticisms of the Democrat party?
There are way too many people who think any criticism is desire to make the dems better is nothing but outside influence.
Especially when pointing out the flaws or failures
Still at this you weirdo stalker?
Surely the Dems wont blow this on some terrible tactical decision around optimizing corporate and foreign government bribes, ignoring what their constituents want, and reflexively beating up their left flank.
Lol. Really? The last time they had a choice between a tepid mid candidate and an impeached, convicted piece of literal rapist shit and they chose to let the rapist shit into the office. I don't have high hopes, tbh. The voters would rather virtue signal than get off their fat asses to save their country.
They thought that voting for the impeached, convicted piece of literal rapist shit would mean they'd have more money. It turns out he made them have less money, so now they're re-considering.
To find the cloud in the silver lining, I can easily see how this doesn't happen.
Currently we are outraged at ICE and military in our streets inflicting harm on innocents, nervous about getting in a war no one would have even thought of, suffering from tariffs increasing prices and ACA premiums going way up.
The thing about every single one of those is that Republicans caused them and Republicans can mostly fix them. Simply by undoing the things they caused in the first place makes folks feel like things are getting fixed, and many will forget why they were broken and just be focused on how they got better during the election year.
So I expect immigration enforcement to tone down (already saw a story to that effect), for them to manage a last minute ACA subsidy extension with much drama, pulling back a lot of tariffs, and chilling out on Venezuela for 2026. Going extra by cutting some "tariff fund" checks and some HSA deposits, to make sure the people get some money, even if it is smaller than the money lost, people fall for "windfalls". Maybe throw some folks under the bus like RFK Jr and Hegseth, to drain the swamp so to speak.
It's a possibility for sure but it leans on the idea of a sudden surge of 1) competence and 2) congress and scotus reeling in the presidential power
I've got money that says Dems wont reclaim more than one house in 2026 due to their own milquetoast incompetance. Let alone a winning sweep in 2028
They have a page outlining their platform on the website, and it's actually a really good plan, but it's kind of hard when the DNC have had 48 seats or less for over a decade and since some of the stuff has been ruled unconstitutional by the SCOTUS, such as the Citizens United decision, they're going to need to pass constitutional amendments which require 2/3rds majorities.
I am waiting to see what will be the excuse of dem votes to not vote one more time.
Well I'm prayin' for rain I'm praying for tidal waves I wanna see the ground give way
-TooL
Imagine thinking that legit elections are on the way.
In order to SNATCH this Victory for DECADES and DECADES to Come, bringing in a HUGE Era of Democratic Rule, we should FIRST Shut Down the ENTIRE Government for over a MONTH for LITERALLY no Reason!
That was the Rs.
LMBO yeah, so amazing we can flip the coin! WOOOOOO go BlueMAGA!!!
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lol. The great blue tsunami? Probably more like great blue tear splash. Never underestimate their ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. It’s by design.
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