Summary
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) called for Democrats to elect “brawlers” who fight for the working class to counter GOP power and oppose policies endorsed by figures like Elon Musk.
Speaking alongside Sen. Bernie Sanders in Las Vegas, she criticized Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer for not filibustering a GOP spending bill and labeled the decision a “tremendous mistake.”
Ocasio-Cortez urged voters to support candidates willing to take bold stances.
She continues her “Fighting Oligarchy” tour with Sanders across Nevada, Colorado, and Arizona.
Genuine question to our American friends:
How come Bernie, AOC, Crockett etc. don’t start their own party? They can pledge to vote with the dems where it makes sense and they have enough political capital to continue getting elected. Seems like an ideal time to create a 3rd (actual alternative) party, no?
It might force the republicans to create an alt right and centre right party too which I feel would erode some of the alt right because from experience most Americans are not that alt right.
Because USA has never been a democracy in any meaningful sense.
Our first past the post +presidential election system means that a third party, particularly a splinter third party will just pull votes from the not as terrible party, strengthening the opposition parties electoral strength. Funding third parties in close races to split the opposition has been a strategy of both Republicans and Democrats.
That’s not quite the reason. The system is setup to vote on individuals. The idea of voting for party is propaganda from the parties. Third party candidates in the modern system tend to fare poorly because the districts have been made unmanageably large and require multi million dollar advertising budgets. Which is money that comes from the party and party endorsed fundraising.
Because it leaves open the potential for a Democrat v. Republican v. New Party election (at whatever level, not just presidency) and that’s likely to improve Republican chances. Where the progressive candidates are strong it’s better for them to beat the centrist in a one on one then take on the Republican with their center-left voters. Where they’re weak the most a three way contest does is maybe make the right win over the center.
There are many many races without real Republican challengers where a new party could challenge moderate Democrats from the left, but in those situations the Democratic primary is the real vote and you might as well just win there.
The potential is there, but I doubt it will come to that. The same potential was there for the Tea Party to spoil GOP races. Instead, the GOP became the Tea Party.
We need a Guillotine Party to drag the Democrats back to the people.
The Tea Party ran in Republican primaries. They aren’t a new party.
A distinction without a difference. Whether they are a new party, or a sect within the old GOP isn’t particularly relevant. The relevant part is that the GOP adopted their positions and rhetoric.
That’s the whole thing this is all about. A new party competes against the main party in general elections. Otherwise, whatever the name says, it’s just a caucus. The Democrats already have the Justice Democrats recruiting progressives to run in primaries. They also have the Working Families Party, which is closer to a real party than either the Justice Democrats or the Tea Party, but they still don’t really compete with the Democrats outside of primaries (they go “head to head” in New York, but usually to represent votes for the same candidates).
Bernie already runs as an Independent!
State laws make ballot access difficult. Every state has its own rules and most of them are meant to exclude 3rd parties. Neither Dems nor MAGAts like competition.
Because we have this stupid two party system. Its the second worst thing about our constitution (the first being the presidency)
They kind of are in a different party: the Democratic Socialists of America isn’t on the ballot but Bernie runs as an independent who caucuses with Democrats. If Democrats wanted to, they could run a candidate against him. But to form a truly independent third party, you’d just be splitting the votes on the left.
As you get to state and national elections where much of the nation is pretty evenly divided, running as a third party all but ensures the Republican will win (even without winning a majority in most states, though a few use different systems). In essence, our system requires coalitions to be made before the election rather than after.
You could compare it to UK elections. In 2024, Labour won 33% of the votes but won 411 of 650 seats because the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, and regional parties split the rest.
They actually couldn’t really. Bernie wins the Democratic primary in his state then just runs as an Independent. He’s the chosen representative of the Vermont Democratic Party.
I stand corrected. Everyone listen to 👆that poster.
My state (Louisiana) has a different election system — actually several and it’s currently a confusing mess — and I’m not really familiar with Vermont’s primaries.
In Louisiana, the November election is actually technically a primary. If no one gets 50%, the top two candidates (regardless of party) have a run-off in December. For various reasons over the years, some elections were changed to be more like first past the post with closed party primaries. Others weren’t. And now, it’s just a messy hodgepodge. (And to top it all off, our governor and many other elections are “off-year” so it doesn’t align with federal elections. We’re voting on Amendments on March 29th. It’s idiotic.)
Can’t say for sure, but I’d wager it’s because of campaign finance. Corpos fund campaigns and a pro worker 3rd party would be inherently against corporate interests. Anyone who tried to break away from the democrats would end up without any funds and new democrats would run against them with vastly more money.
It’s also worth considering that they’re probably not that popular. Most of the population are disengaged from politics and tend to just vote with the people in their communities. Text based social media tends towards a leftist bias and probably makes them seem more popular than they really are.
Money. They wouldn’t be able to fundraise the money they need to get messages out to people. Then there’s the depressingly large number of Americans who vote by party in a system meant for voting by individual. They would lose funding and then get smashed in the elections because nobody knew the party was even there.
Thanks for the response. That’s the thing - I feel like they’re big enough personalities on their own to get elected. AOC did it initially on a shoestring is my understanding and she’s well past the point of having voter recognition.
A couple reasons.
Bernie and the Democrats are going to align 90% of the time (just like with Manchin on the other end of the spectrum). Basically, the other party is anti-America. So being pro-America makes you a de facto Democrat.
Since we don’t have Ranked Choice Voting or any other system that is conducive to multiple parties, primaries allow directionally aligned candidates to decide who is most popular to avoid splitting the vote. This isn’t necessary if a candidate has enough support for it to not matter. (Bernie is an independent in congress, but he ran as a Democrat in his presidential runs.)